Benjamin Franklin Calk of San Antonio passed away May 11, 2009, at the age of 88. Benjamin Franklin Calk was born in Del Rio, Texas on January 9, 1921 to Henry and Mary Elizabeth Calk, who everyone called Lizzie. He was the baby of the family, being the 9th of 9 children. He was preceded in death by his wife Viola Emmabell Wiemers Calk. He is survived by his son Ethan and wife Mary Elizabeth, two grandchildren, Emily Elizabeth and Christopher Curtis Calk. If you didn't know Ben well, you'd think he was shy and never talked. But he loved to tell stories - not made up stories, but reminisces from his life. He really loved telling his grandchildren Emily and Christopher all about the things he remembered from his past. One story he told quite often was about the day he was born. He was born on his big sister Florence's seventeenth birthday. As she later told him, I was seventeen and I was just getting interested in boys. And here you come along, and they hand you to me and say 'take care of him.' So much for the boys-" She must not have minded her baby brother too much, though - they celebrated their birthdays together every single year. As a kid, Ben had extremely curly hair. He used to laugh every time he related how his three sisters Florence, Dorothy and Hattie were so jealous that they had straight hair and he was the lucky one with the curls. They would always try to hold him down and comb his hair, but they couldn't get a comb or a brush through it! And when his sisters went to the beauty parlor to get a permanent, he'd always ask, "Why is it called a permanent when you have to get one every three months?? That's not permanent!" Ben was a mischievous youth. While his older brothers David, Elijah and Lloyd worked for their dad's transfer business, he and his friends ran all over Del Rio pulling pranks on people. There was a footbridge over the swimming hole at San Felipe Springs. All the kids would stand on the edge of the bridge, hold on to the chain railing, and take their time getting up the courage to jump off into the icy cold spring water. Ben would take a small dry cell battery, hook up a couple wires to the railing, and when the kids grabbed hold of it, he sent the small electrical current through the chain, which forced the kids to get wet a lot sooner than they had planned. He also made a cannon out of a piece of pipe, which turned out to be a lot more powerful than he realized, and it shot a golf ball completely through the neighbor's garage. Another favorite pastime was to put nickels on the train tracks, and after the train ran over them, he would try to pass them off as worn out quarters- And outhouses were seldom safe from him and his friends, especially at Halloween. Ben graduated from Del Rio High School in 1940, and since his mom had passed away a few years earlier, he and his father moved to San Antonio, where they lived with Ben's sister Florence. He worked in the store of the old Prinz dairy, which at the time, was far outside the city limits of San Antonio. Now, we call it the intersection of Loop 410 and Blanco Road. He worked 12 hours a day for 25 cents an hour, but he still had money to buy a car, go to Playland Park and splurge on burgers and malts at the original Pig Stand on Broadway. In November of 1943, Uncle Sam caught up with him, and he was drafted into the Army. He did his basic training in Florida, where he made many a march through the swamps with a 90 pound pack on his back - no small feat considering he was only 60 pounds heavier than the pack! He was always proud of the fact he could make it all the way through every march. His secret was to never sit down or take off the pack during his rest breaks. Those who did sometimes couldn't get back on their feet. In June of 1944, he boarded the Queen Mary, which was now outfitted for troop transport instead of luxury cruising, and headed for the European theater. He landed on Normandy beach one month after the D-Day invasion. He was there less than a month when he was wounded in the leg by a sniper while crossing an open area between two walls. Luckily, it missed the bone, and he didn't even realize he was wounded until he felt something warm on his leg and looked down. Until then, he thought he'd been scratched by a small bramble bush. Another story he loved to tell took place just after he was brought to the field hospital behind the front lines. He was lying in a stretcher beside a fox hole, waiting to be treated and moved to another location. Suddenly, mortars started raining down on the camp, and all the soldiers, orderlies and doctors took cover. They forgot one thing, though - Ben! So he mustered up his strength and rolled himself off the stretcher and down into the fox hole - wounded leg and all. After that, he was taken to a hospital in England, where he spent several months living with blackouts and the threat of buzz bombs. He described them in great detail - how they had just enough fuel to get over to England, and if you heard the propellers turning, you were safe. But if you heard them stop, you knew they were coming down and you'd better take cover. Finally back in the states, he spent a few months convalescing at Fort Sam Houston until the Army awarded him his Purple Heart and Honorable Discharge in October of 1945. Soon after his discharge, he was visiting his sister Dorothy and her husband Marvin, who worked on a farm north of Hondo. While he was there, he was introduced to the family across the gravel road, and their oldest daughter caught his eye. Her name was Viola Wiemers. Pretty soon, he was driving out to Hondo quite often, but not so much to see his sister. After a courtship of several years, on December 29, 1951, Ben and Viola stood in this very church and repeated their wedding vows. They made their home in San Antonio, and Ben soon began working for a cabinet shop with his brother-in-law Marvin. He worked at that same cabinet company with the same bosses for nearly three decades until his retirement in 1986. In September of 1956, Ben and Viola welcomed a new baby boy into the world, their son Ethan. The little family loved to visit relatives on both sides of the family. Many a weekend was spent in Austin, Houston, Elgin and Corpus Christi visiting Ben's brothers and sisters, and here in Hondo visiting grandparents Otto and Emma Wiemers, and Viola's siblings Elbert, Meryle and Laura. Sunday morning would often find them sitting in these pews, joining in with the beautiful four part harmonies from the old hymns in the Cokesbury hymnal. Ben and his brother-in-law John would spend hours roaming the Wiemers' farm, scouring the countryside for elusive Indian arrowheads. Ben also bagged some pretty delicious venison from the deer blinds on the property. One of the things Ethan remembers from his childhood were the songs at bedtime. It seemed that he could never go to sleep until he and his dad would lie in bed together and sing two or three old country and western songs from the 30s and 40s - songs like You Are My Sunshine, Home on the Range, Waiting for a Train and the nonsensical song The Horses Run Around. Ben even resurrected that song for his grandchildren, and used to love watching them laugh when he sang "go get the axe, there's a hair on baby's chin." Ben also loved the Guadalupe River. From the early days of his marriage, he'd take the family to old man Keeble's place just off Highway 281, where he'd meet his brothers and sisters for some good old fashioned camping. No tents, no trailers, no RVs - just a tarp strung between some trees and old canvas army cots set up beneath them. Cooking was done on a Coleman stove set atop a metal folding table. Menus consisted of the fish they caught on the trot lines along the river. Later, after Mr. Keeble's passing, Ben and Viola found another great place to camp just down river, and leased a small piece of land, where they built a shed, a metal roof, a makeshift kitchen, and most important of all, an outhouse! Ben spent countless weekends at the river with his nephew Marvin Jr. and his family, fishing, checking the lines, and cruising up and down the river in their flat- bottomed boat. But no one seems to recall him ever swimming. I guess you don't have to get in the river to love it. Ben was an expert cabinet builder. He was very precise, very methodical, very particular and very exacting in his work. He could recognize any piece of wood just by looking at the grain - whether it was oak, poplar, birch, cedar or even teak - and he knew which types of wood were better for which type of cabinet, or what kind of hardwood best matched a particular type of plywood. And not only did he know his wood, he was strong! Ethan worked several summers with his dad at the cabinet shop and he was always amazed at how Ben could handle a heavy heavy four by eight foot sheet of plywood. He would set up his table saw with the precise measurements, turn on the blade, then walk off to the back room where the plywood was stored. A few seconds later, he'd emerge carrying one of the huge sheets, and without breaking stride, he'd lower the plywood to the saw table and run it through - all in one motion! A special day for Ben was June 22, 1985. That was the day Ethan married his sweetheart, Mary Elizabeth. It was especially meaningful to Ben, since his new daughter-in-law had the same name as his mother. After his retirement, Ben enjoyed helping Viola baby-sit Emily and Christopher while Mary and Ethan taught school. Every afternoon, he had something "funny" to report that one of the kids said or did. One day Viola was cooking some fresh vegetables for lunch, and Ben laughed so hard his sides nearly split open when Christopher toddled into the room and said, "Phew... what's that smell? Food?" After Viola passed away in April of 2006, Ben still lived on his own. He went grocery shopping, made regular trips to the bank, and occasionally got lunch from Sonic or Burger King. He'd also call the family every weekend and invite them to lunch at Grady's, Jim's Coffee Shop, Taco Cabana or Whataburger. He spent his last day before going to the hospital running his usual errands to the grocery store, the bank and the garage to get his water pump fixed. Benjamin Franklin Calk loved life. He loved iced cold slices of watermelon, licorice candy and ripe, delicious figs. He loved family, family gatherings, and telling stories. He loved collecting old coins, old postcards, old photographs and spent hours looking through them and reminiscing. He loved trains. He especially loved his train clock that would sound different train whistles on the hour. He got a kick out of watching his grandchildren run into the kitchen to hear it whoo woo over and over. He loved games night at his church, Los Angeles Heights UMC. He loved playing Uno, board games, dominos, and card games. And he especially loved eating cake and cookies all the while he played. He loved attending his granddaughter's dance recitals, and would always tease her and say, "Emily, do you want Grandpa to get on his costume and come up on stage and dance with you?" He loved watching his grandson play little league baseball and wouldn't miss a single game. Ben was a baseball player in his youth, and often talked about the home run he hit that went above the lights and "never came down." He loved watching game shows. His favorites were Deal or No Deal and Wheel of Fortune. He loved eating ice cream but not out of a bowl or a cup. It had to be eaten in a cone. He kept a full supply of cones and HEB 1905 Vanilla in stock at all times. He loved all living creatures, especially cats. He had a menagerie of cats, both inside and out. His favorite cats were Boy and Kit Kat; the latter not named after the candy bar, but because, in his words, "she once was a kitten and now she's a cat." He also loved feeding his outdoor animals - birds, squirrels, possums, raccoons and even the occasional skunk. Every night he'd sit in the back room watching TV, but his eye was more on the back door to see who could come eat that night. Many times, he'd remark that a raccoon and a skunk were eating out of the same bowl. His last three months were extremely difficult. He suffered a heart attack, kidney failure, respiratory failure - you name it, he seemed to have it. But he fought hard. He got off the ventilator, and he tried his best to talk to us, saying "let's get out of here and go eat," or "let's go home." When Emily, Mary and her sister Martha visited him in the hospital, he smiled and said "look at all these beautiful faces!" When Emily told him she loved him, he mustered up all his strength, reached up to try to hug her neck and said "I love you too." But in the end, it was just too much for him, and Jesus called his fellow carpenter home on May 11, 2009. Benjamin Franklin Calk was easy to talk to, easy to please. But most of all, he was easy to love. Visitation was from 9:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. Saturday May 16, at New Fountain United Methodist Church, followed by the Funeral Service. Burial followed in New Fountain Cemetery. Memorials may be made to the Disabled American Veterans.