Legend Of Speedy

Matt Armstrong, a dedicated fan of ours, wrote and submitted the following, and as a followup I went an took some pics of his grave marker and the old parlor he resided in for years.

(Matt, thanks for your submission!!)

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I was reading over your website and noticed that at the end of the Della Barnes Story you mentioned Speedy, thought I'd tell you guys what I know about it, and give ya some stuff that I wasn't sure of but found out.

Speedy was a black man found during the 1937 flood and was embalmed by the original owner of Hammock Bowles Funeral home, they moved him around on roller skates, and had him dressed ina tux. When I was a kid, we would go see him, down on 7th Street at the Funeral Parlor.

Actually, Speedy was dead before the flood happened. He was already embalmed and kept in a closet but the floodwaters washed him out. He ended up being counted as one of the casualties.

It took 66 years, but Charles Henry "Speedy" Atkins was finally buried in Paducah, KY. "Speedy," as he was known by admirers, was a well-preserved corpse that had been kept at the Hamock-Bowles Funeral Home since he died in 1928.

He was kept mostly in a closet at the funeral home and brought out for tourists who wanted to see the body of a man who died 66 years ago and was still well-preserved. The funeral home did not charge people to view the body.

Speedy has been a media celebrity, having appeared on national TV several times and been featured in newspapers across the country and national magazines--including JET (Dec. 10, 1964).

Speedy was the subject of a successful experiment by funeral home owner A. Z. Hamock, who mixed a few chemicals to create a unique embalming fluid that preserved Speedy the way Egyptians preserved mummies. In the 1920s, funeral homes usually had to keep bodies for several weeks while the families, who were usually poor, raised money for the funeral. Hamock died in 1949 and never revealed the secret embalming fluid.

Mrs. Velma Hamock who was married to Hamock in 1943, and now runs the funeral home, told JET before the funeral services: "It was all an experiment, but it was a success. Speedy's never been duplicated, he's the only one that we know of. He's not stinking, nothing. The amazing thing is he really hasn't lost all of his features. He doesn't look like a corpse laying up in the casket for 66 years. I never saw a dead man bring so much happiness to people."

About 200 people attended Speedy's recent funeral at the Washington Street Missionary Baptist Church in Paducah and bade him farewell in a rousing, emotional service. They sang gospel hymns for Speedy, including Soon And Very Soon, I Won't Complain and The Lord's Prayer.

No one at the funeral knew Speedy while he was alive, but a woman from Baltimore sent a letter saying she remembered Speedy as a man who was kind to children.

"He always had pennies for my sister and me," wrote Ella L. Simmons, who said she was about 5 when she knew Speedy.

Rev. H. Joseph Franklin of Washington, D.C., delivered the eulogy and described Speedy as "a pauper, poor, homeless, a nobody. Today, he's going to be laid to rest at last, as a celebrity," he said. "Generations will talk about Speedy who nobody knew in life but everybody knew in death."

Little is known about Speedy's life except that he got his nickname by being a fast worker at a tobacco factory and was 50 years old when he drowned while fishing in the Ohio River. He did not have any family or close friends, except the funeral home owner A.Z. Hamock, who sought permission from the local coroner to use Speedy in the experiment.

Speedy also was quite a lady's man. "They say that women loved him," Mrs. Hamock said. "He had girlfriends. He was a womanizer. I remember my husband said his last girlfriend was a schoolteacher. And she was very attractive he said."

Mrs. Hamock and the funeral home co-owner Clifton C. Bowles Jr., felt it was time to bury Speedy. She felt that she and Bowles had a responsibility to make sure that Speedy received a proper funeral service. "We didn't want it (the body) to change on us. Sixty-six years is a long time to be with somebody. And we just thought it was time to let him be laid to rest."

She will always think of Speedy who brought fame to her funeral home. "You can't grieve after people when they die. You're not supposed to," she believes. "Because it's their time to go and life goes on. You don't love anything so hard until you can't give it up. Because love goes beyond the grave. You still love even though they're in the ground."

Speedy's funeral, steel casket, flowers and burial plot were all donated by local businesses.

As Speedy's body was being lowered into the ground at Maplelawn Cemetery, Bowles sobbed, "It kind of hurts. He's been with us so long."

Rev. Franklin praised Speedy as a poor man who was born "with nothing" but "when he left here he had everything-"love, admiration, respect from people all over the world."