William T. Malcolm
Oconee Enterprise
Friday Apr 3, 1925
Page One
Mr. W.T. Malcolm Aged Citizen Died Last Friday Night
Mr. William T. Malcolm, aged 85, died at his home just above Watkinsville last Friday. Mr. Malcolm was one of Oconee’s most prominent and well known citizens. He was a member of Mr. Zion church and a confederate verteran (sic). Mr. Malcolm had been in failing health, for the past several years, but not until and here recently had he taken his bed.
Funeral and interment were at Malcolm cemetery Sunday afternoon Rev. Brindle, of Griffin, performing the last sad rites over this faithful citizen of our county.
Mr. Malcolm is survived by his widow, Mrs. Nancy Malcolm and the following children; Messrs E.A. Malcolm, and J.B. Malcolm, and Mrs. Sarah Brown, Mrs. M. Malcolm, Mrs. Maude Ridgeway, Mrs. Daisy Tillman.
The Enterprise joins in with their many friends in expressing sympathy to the bereaved one.
Oconee Enterprise
Friday, May 1, 1925
In Memory of W.T. (Buck) Malcom
In the passing of Buck Malcom, Oconee County lost one of its best men. He was a great asset t other (sic) community in which he lived, always alive and active to the best interest of his community. He was steadfast in his opinions, yet gentle and kind to the unfortunate and bereaved one.
Uncle Buck loved his family and his friends. He believed in putting flowers in the pathway of his friends and loved ones, instead of placing them on caskets after they lay silent and could not appreciate them. He was always a foe to sham and a believer of the genuine. He believed in hewing to the line and let the chips fall where they may. He was never daunted by difficulty or swayed in his thoughts or his actions by circumstances. He did not follow the crowd; he did not follow anybody until convinced that they were right; he was led by his own convictions and from this distinguished feature of his character the most useful lesson can be drawn. Certainly great influence was for this reason exerted by him. The writer spent many days of his childhood around the fireside of this great man, and thru the boyhood days, and on as time swiftly passed into manhood. To know Uncle Buck intimately was to love him, his fatherly advice will never be forgotten.
Man does not live by bread alone, but by faith, hope and love. Nothing in the human story is more striking than the persistent, passionate, profound protext of man against death, even in the earliest time. We see him daring to stand erect at the gates of the grave, disputing his verdict, refusing to let it have the last word and making argument in behalf of his soul; as for Emerson, as for Addison, that fact alone was proof enough of immortality as revealing a universal institution of eternal life beyond the grave. Others may not be easily converted, but no man who has the heart of a man can fail to be impressed by the ancient heroic faith of his race.
Uncle Buck was not so active in the so called Church work of today but he believed in clean living, and reverence to the Almighty God. He believed in practice what you preach. There is an order to which men belong that knows no creed, but is directed by Fraternal regard, rather than narrow obligations – they call themselves the best people on earth, and in one respect indeed they are, because with them the good man’s deeds live on after his mortal remains are buried beneath the sod, the frailties of our brothers we write upon the sand. So let us forget, if we might have seen in frailties, in Uncle Buck, except lessons they might bring to us, and remember only the gentleness and sweetness of his life, his own recognition of any failure to give all of his ambitions and his abiding desire for right. We must think of his bravery and fearlessness in defense of his standards and of his dauntless fights for these ideals. We must do our duty as we see it, and then go bravely onward and forward, none but the Master may make the final verdict as Judge. We may go the right road, we may go the wrong, in the trust we are going the right, and yet even in the wrong road there may come at our time of mortal peril a wonderful flash of lightning from the sky, showing us where we are and on the very brink we may look up in self surrender to the Master and say “I am wrong, help me, set me right.” No one can ever say that such a last prayer is refused by Him who loveth and pity all of his children.
His nephew,
O.H. Bradbury
