When Jimmy Anderson was in sixth grade, he literally gave a classmate the shoes off of his feet. That was the kind of guy his sister, Mary Walls, said he always was.
He passed away at 62 on Aug. 26 after a bout with an aggressive form of rectal cancer. A benefit to raise money for his medical and funeral expenses will be held at the Stinesville Mercantile from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sept. 4.
“Once it got into his liver, there was no cure for it,” Walls said.
The cancer was discovered when Anderson went to the emergency room for abdominal pain. The doctor told him he had cancer and referred him to an oncologist, who said he had two to five weeks left. There was nothing they could do to help but make him comfortable.
There are three nurses in the family, Walls said, and they all asked themselves if there were signs that they missed, if there was something they could have done.
Walls acknowledged that maybe there was, but Anderson did not talk about it. She described Anderson as one of those “kind of cool and big, beefy redneck guys (who) take a Tylenol and go on.”
To his family, Anderson was “The Fixer.” He could always be depended on to fix objects and bail his family out of scraps, no matter how big or small.
“He was the hero of the family,” Walls said.
About 40 years ago, he founded Anderson Trucking and continued to work as an independent truck driver for the rest of his life. He loved Peterbilt semitrucks and saved up for years to get one.
“When he got it, that was a big thing, everybody has to take a ride in it,” Walls said.
He started playing guitar when he was five years old. He played gospel at Stinesville Pentecostal Church every Sunday and Stevie Ray Vaughan at home. He also sang and wrote his own songs, though he did not perform them, and his family honored his love for music by performing those songs at his funeral service.
One of the things that became apparent to Walls after the word got out that Anderson was sick was how many friends he had. One person noted that the door to his room at the hospital was “like a revolving door.” One person left, another person came. Though the illness wore him out, Walls said, he refused to turn anyone away. They were saying goodbye.
“He was a people person,” she said. “He really loved to be with people.”
“As he was sick, I began to look around and all down his hallway were these pictures of everybody in the family, not just his brothers and sisters, his kids and his grandkids, but cousins and friends of the family and church people,” she continued.
They were small pictures arranged in straight lines inside 16-inch-by-20-inch picture frames, and there were enough of them to line both sides of the hallway.
A collection is ongoing at the Stinesville Pentecostal Church, which, so far, has helped raise a couple thousand dollars. Walls said she hopes to match that at the benefit concert.
The show will be held at the Stinesville Mercantile. It begins with an open mic from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed by the Circle of Friends jam band and headliner Rich Anderson Show, which features Lloyd Wood.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2016. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.