Victor Smiley, home at last

Text and photograph by JAMIE FRANCIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 23, 2001

He looked great, they all agreed.

Handsome, healthy, even a little sexy, according to his mother.

For more than seven years they had longed to say these things about Victor Smiley. Instead, they had worried about the discomfort of his wheelchair, or the intrusive tubes around his neck and stomach, or who would take care of him as they all grew older.

On Feb. 10, as Victor's body lay at rest near the pulpit of St. Jude United Holiness Church in St. Petersburg, those worries were gone. Victor, they said, was going to a better place. And his family finally got a glimpse of the man that he might have become.

He was dressed in a suit for the first time in his life, all white accept for a jet black shirt. White cotton gloves fit snugly over his fingers and disappeared under his jacket sleeves. The pained contortions on his face were gone. His hair was longer than they had seen it in years.

No one had seen him look so peaceful since June 24, 1993, when he was 13 and a student at 16th Street Middle School.

He was riding his gray BMX bike that evening along a sidewalk in the 2000 block of Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) St. S when he glided off the curb and collided with a Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority bus.

The accident left him just short of comatose. Essentially asleep, he passed the years in rehabilitation and health care centers. He spent most of his time in a customized wheelchair that held his head and body in place. He breathed through a hole in his neck and took in liquids through a hole in his stomach. All of these ailments finally caught up with Victor.

His family remained faithful with plenty of visits. Each Aug. 27, his birthday, they had a party for him. At first they had the parties in the yard on 16th Avenue S, where his grandparents, Johnnie and Rose Bable, live. Later, as Victor's condition grew worse, they held the parties wherever he was living.

They always brought a cake with candles and balloons. Everyone pitched in to sing Happy Birthday and blow out the tiny flames. Sometimes they thought Victor recognized their voices, but they never knew for sure.

After his passing they gathered again at the Bables', back in the yard where they have celebrated so many birthdays, family reunions and Sunday dinners. They waited silently for the white Cadillacs that would take them to St. Jude for the service. "Too soon to cry," Victor's father, Willie Smiley said, "but you know it's coming."

Maybe that's why Grandpa Bable asked everyone to join hands and bow their heads. His steady voice provided a moment of calm. "Lord help us through this day," he began.

They refused to call Victor's passing a funeral.

"This hurts, but it's a homecoming, not a funeral," insisted Willie Smiley, who along with Victor's three brothers is dressed in a white suit, just like Victor.

"He went through a lot of suffering and not being able to express himself," Smiley said. "You could see that he was frustrated. He wanted to do for himself, but he just couldn't. He would rumble and shake, but he couldn't do it."

That was all finished now.

Bishop Edwin Nesbitt was the last one standing over Victor's body as it rested in the coffin on the blue carpet at St. Jude's. Nesbitt and Victor shared the same birthday. "He would have been 22 next time; I'll be 78," Nesbitt said.

Nesbitt beamed as he told the story about Victor saying he was going to be a preacher. During their visits together, when Victor was in his wheelchair, Nesbitt would say, "I'm getting old, boy, you better get out of that chair and preach."

Nesbitt read Victor's favorite Bible passage, the 23rd Psalm, and with the crowd sang Victor's favorite hymn, Won't It Be Grand.

The preacher's voice thundered as he reminded everyone that the time for good is now.

"You can stand right there (next to the people you love) and death can come and take your loved ones, and you can't do anything about it.

"So give me my flowers now. Speak kind words to me while I can hear them. I want to see the flowers and feel what the kind words can do for me."

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