The latest milestone achieved by former Arlington Mayor Elzie Odom is something that only about one half of one percent of the country’s population can match.
Together with a standing-room crowd at the city’s athletic center that bears his name, Elzie and his wife Ruby, celebrated his 95th birthday last month.
Almost a side note on the occasion, but a remarkable achievement so rare that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there aren’t even statistics for it, the couple is also celebrating their 77th wedding anniversary.
Four years ago I wrote about the couple’s remarkable lifetime journey on the occasion of Elzie’s dedication of his public and family papers to the UT Arlington library’s Special Collections.
Having done that leaves a record of their public and private lives that reveals insight into a personalized experience of the period in our nation’s history when the flaws of our founding were finally put right.
Beginning with his birth in 1929 in Shankleville, Texas, he shared his and Ruby’s early life story. Some in attendance at the birthday party, may not have heard it before.
Shankleville was an African-American municipality built by freedmen, former slaves who were emancipated during and after the Civil War.
His great, great grandfather, Jim Shankle founded the community in 1867. Elzie’s account of his forebear’s life as husband to his wife Winnie and her three slave children will keep any audience spellbound.
When Shankle’s owner on a Mississippi plantation sold his wife and children to a Texas slave owner, he was left alone and desperate to somehow be reunited with them.
“All he knew about Texas,” Elzie explains, “was that it was somewhere to the West.”
Risking his life as a runaway, Shankle set out on foot over a 400-mile journey, swimming the Mississippi and Sabine Rivers, looking for Winnie. They were ultimately reunited, freed, and raised Winnie’s three children and six of their own in Shankleville.
Elzie and Ruby, whose families lived in Shankleville, fell in love during their teenage years. In a borrowed suit, he and Ruby exchanged their wedding vows in 1947. “After the ceremony, I paid the preacher and had ten dollars left in the world. I gave Ruby half and each of us gave our church a dollar and we began our life together with the remaining eight dollars,” recalls Elzie.
The couple would eventually find their way to Arlington as Elzie, the fifth black postal inspector in the country, was transferred here.
With a growing interest in serving the broader community and with the encouragement of his family and many friends, Elzie won a seat on the city council in 1990 as the first black person to hold that post.
Serving as mayor at the time, I considered the history-making event as having ushered in a period of inclusion across the racial characteristics of the city.
I could always count on Elzie to be thoroughly committed to the daunting tasks we faced together and instrumental in leadership that produced the results our city badly needed to see happen.
Elzie would be essential in the transformation of our form of government from a method of electing council members in an all at-large system to a combination of five single member districts and three at-large seats to better serve a rapidly expanding city.
When I decided not to seek re-election after ten years as mayor, Elzie sought and won that job becoming the first black mayor in a city with a black population of less than ten percent of its total citizenry.
The birthday party provided a great opportunity to be reminded of the impact this remarkable couple has had on our city. They will quickly tell you it’s all grounded in faith resulting in boundless blessings from God.
Richard Greene is a former
mayor of Arlington.
