Franklin Delano "Frank" Ellis waited for his bus home, tired from a long day of working at Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. But he had energy for just a little more kidding around.
When a woman came up and asked him if he knew her name, Ellis, who is blind, gave the correct answer. "Some women get mad at you if you call 'em by the wrong name," joked Ellis, who is 64 and has been happily married since 1966.
On his morning and evening commutes to his Greensboro home, Ellis entertains an entourage of fellow workers from Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind, as well as the bus driver and other riders. At about 6 feet tall, with wrap-around shades, gray hair and a cane, Ellis is a commanding figure, an old-school man of the world.
His joking is not always of the politically correct sort. For example, when someone asks him what color a traffic light is, Ellis says it looks green to him. And as the bus waits to turn onto a highway, Ellis will sometimes say he doesn't see any cars coming.
It's part of his way of dealing with a tragedy that might have turned others into recluses. Here's the way Ellis tells the story.
It happened back in August 1962 in Nash County. Ellis, 18, was hanging out at a house, partying with friends, taking a weekend break from working in the tobacco fields.
Ellis told a man that the man was old enough to be his "daddy-in-law."
"We had a few words, joking, you know," Ellis told me on the PART bus last week. "Evidently he didn't like it."
The man left the party, came back with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with birdshot and fired at Ellis. Pellets tore into his eyes.
He was taken to a local emergency room, then to the hospital at Duke University the next day. Doctors told him that if he had gotten to Duke earlier, they might have been able to save some of his sight, Ellis said.
"If." If he'd been home looking after his little sister, Ellis said, he wouldn't have been shot.
"I was kind of bitter at first," he said. Gradually, during months of rehabilitation, he left the "ifs" behind. He realized the blast could have killed him.
And he said, "You have to start all over. First of all, you got to accept your condition. I just got over it and kept on going."
Ellis learned how to read Braille and navigate with a cane. He came to Greensboro for a job with Industries for the Blind, where he worked for several years before taking his job at Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. He married. He and his wife, Juanita, raised five children.
His sense of touch, smell and taste are sharper than before he lost his sight, Ellis says. He misses the vision he enjoyed for the first 18 years of his life. His sense of humor helped. Ellis calls it "cuttin' the fool," joking about everything from women's cooking (he says they use too many crock pots and microwaves these days) to his blindness.
"He wants to be the life of the party, that's Frank," said Jason Kirkpatrick, Ellis' supervisor at Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. He added that Ellis, who is assigned to assembly and packaging, is a good worker.
Ellis said that the man who shot him got 10 years in prison. He went to the man's trial, but never talked with him after the shooting. He said he later forgave him.
"I was raised up in the church," Ellis said. "I just learned that you have to forgive people. If you don't, that makes it worse. That's the way you have to do it."
He has heard that the man is now dead.
Wherever he is, he's probably not having as much fun as Ellis.
Frank Ellis got the last laugh. And it's been a long one.
■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at 727-7357 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement