The Life of E. Morris Chisholm
Today, March 11th, is my grandfather’s birthday. He would have been 104 years old. He was 71 years when he passed which seemed old to me at the time but so very young now. Everyone called him “Sweetie”. He was well liked and got along with everyone. He was a Virginia Gentleman, a farmer, and an engineer. Family and work were the most important things in his life.
I remember Sweetie with his blue eyes, handsome white hair, tall and slim, fit, wearing cowboy boots (always), wrangler jeans or khakis, and a navy blue blazer with the Chisholm crest. He was proud of his Scottish heritage and visited the Chisholm Castle, Erchless, in Beauly near Inverness, Scotland.
My favorite times with Sweetie were fishing, riding through the fields checking cattle (I would sit on his lap and drive), walking the white painted fences while holding his hand, ice skating (pulled behind his 4 wheeler), eating ginger ale (ginga-ale) and vanilla ice cream floats, swimming in the pond, singing and dancing, and listening to all the stories and wisdom he parted with.
Most of the family photos that I have do not include Sweetie because he was the one always taking the pictures. He gave me my first Nikon camera when I was a teenager and with it began my love of photography that continues to this day.
As a child, my grandfather was known to eat just the center out of a watermelon and trade the icing on a cake for a Red Flyer sled that we still own today. He grew up in the country and learned farming at an early age.
The first vehicle he drove was a piece of heavy equipment that belonged to his father’s construction company, Haley, Chisholm & Morris, established in 1900. He bought out the partners, Mr. Haley and Mr. Morris, in the 1960’s and continued to run the company until his passing in 1993. HCM is still operating today. He loved to work in the field and walk a job. Building lakes was his passion and he built many on Adventure Farm, his home since 1950, as well as area lakes such as Chris Greene Lake and Mallard Lake. In the evenings, we would go fishing and cook up our catch for dinner. Sweetie’s father-in-law would often catch so many fish, including catfish, that he would spend hours cleaning them after a long day at work.
Sweetie purchased Adventure Farm in 1950 without telling my grandmother, Gigi. It was remote back then and she was a city girl from Russell, KY, unaccustomed to living in the middle of nowhere. They built a brick house in 3 months with lumber milled off the farm. It’s pine walls are warm and full of history. He improved the farmland and responsibly raised beef cattle and other livestock over the years. There was an ongoing joke that he would pay us to pick up rocks. There were many rocks, but I never got paid.
When my grandfather semi-retired in his later years, he started playing tennis with Gigi, and she laughed about how much better he was at playing than she was. They took a few trips to Europe and drove across the United States. His first trip abroad was without my grandmother in the early 1980’s. He went to Japan to with a group to look at construction equipment. Sweetie loved telling the story about being in a park and all the women who were there sweeping would stop and pull out their tea, taking in the moment with the belief that it would never happen again.
My grandparents had a large friend group with whom they dined regularly on Sunday evenings at the University Cafeteria or Ken Jonson’s Cafeteria. I loved going out with them on these nights. Sweetie enjoyed Riverside and country diners where he would get a meat and three, hold the meat. The man loved to eat! I don’t know how he stayed slim, with all of the wonderful home-cooked meals that Gigi made him. For lunch, she would pack him 3 sandwiches, all different. Her specialties were her rolls (with plenty of butter and sorghum), spaghetti sauce, apple pie and his favorite, raisin pie. Once, my grandparents went to Timberlake’s Drug Store for dinner before a movie at the Paramount, and when they realized that they didn’t bring cash, Timberlake’s covered the dinner and gave them cash for the movie.
Sweetie and Gigi had the most wonderful love story. He learned that wives don’t like presents like floor polishers and moved on to gifting jewelry in later years. They loved to dance, sing and laugh. They were a great example of genuine good folks who cared about their family and respected hard work. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my grandfather. I try to tell his stories to my children, who never met him. He lives on in our hearts and whenever I see a hawk flying over Adventure Farm, I think of him. He loved this place more than anything in the world.
Edward Morris Chisholm was born in Mineral, VA on March 11, 1922. He was the son of Ruby Cole Harris Chisholm and Louis Pendleton Chisholm and the 4th of 5 children.
