Editorial eulogy of Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons, by Major Peter Gething (page 1 of 2)
Book 1, Page 472 ·1965
Transcription
A handwritten copy of a published editorial eulogy. Heading at the top right of the sheet:
Sunday Aug. 15, 1932 — Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons
Ave Atque Vale
Very occasionally, there appears a man in our midst whose body is constructed of the same common clay as our own, but whose spirit shines with a light so clearly bright as to be incomprehensible to us; and whose devotion to principles of honor, duty and goodness in the face of adversity is so great that we are amazed, for we realize that were we tried in such terrific fires, we would capitulate and find some plausible excuse for our action.
Such a man was Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons. His courage was so highly organized, his nobility of character so apparent, that now he has gone, we wonder from whence came so great a personality, so many qualities of a gentleman occupying our frail body.
It was not only in the hell-spewed days of the War that his courage shone, but also in the less spectacular but more wearying days of peace. For years he fought gallantly against the blindness that threatened him, and made his ability to make a living impossible; for years he fought uncomplainingly, and only when he realized that he would become a burden upon others, did he take the step which to a man of his proud courage was inevitable.
South Carolina has produced some very great gentlemen, but it is to be doubted whether it has produced a greater gentleman than Samuel FitzSimons. Life somehow has become an infinitely nobler thing because he lived.
AI Notes
A handwritten copy in blue ink of a published editorial eulogy of Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons. Headed at the top right ‘Sunday Aug. 15, 1932 / Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons / Ave Atque Vale.’ Copied (per the note on page 473) by Henry F. Rivers from an editorial published in the Charleston Record by Major Peter Gething, who died a few weeks before the copy was made on June 28, 1965. The eulogy continues onto page 473. A minor variant in the original ink: a struck-through letter inside ‘shone’ in the second paragraph — the writer started ‘shones’ and then corrected it.
The subject is Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons (b. 21 Apr 1894, d. 25 July 1932), the WWI combat aviator — son of W. Huger FitzSimons and Annie Cain, and the compiler’s first cousin — whose obituary “Founder of Lost Battalion Dies in Flat Rock” is pasted on page 452. The eulogy’s reference to “the blindness that threatened him” and “the step which … was inevitable” alludes to his death by suicide near Flat Rock, N.C., brought on by progressive war-related blindness. The eulogy continues on page 473.