Carver’s Personal Life
Though Carver loved children, he never had any of his own. Once he attempted to foster a boy at Tuskegee, but the boy did not have the disposition for hard work and study, and he eventually left Carver’s side. Carver never married, and although both of the books I read men- tion one woman who caught his eye, little came of that relationship. In Holt’s version of events (which presum- ably matches Carver’s own), she did not understand his devotion to his work; in Elliot’s version, Carver would not ask her to.
Since Carver’s death, there has been speculation that he did not marry because he was gay. And perhaps that was the case. I often found myself, reading about certain subtle details of his life, wondering if he might be gay. He was recently (2007) included in An Encyclope- dia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture based partly on Holt’s account of his life. Specifi - cally, Holt describes Carver’s late-life devoted friendship with his assistant, Austin W. Curtis, Jr.
Indeed, Carver willed his portion of the profi ts from Holt’s book to Curtis, and (perhaps notably), Tuske- gee fi red Curtis upon Carver’s death.
But Carver was a private man, and he lived dur-
ing a time when public fi gures were allowed truly private lives. In fact, failing to subscribe to the notion that his intimate life (or possibly his lack thereof) is our business, I feel I’ve said more than I should have. But I wondered about it, and I thought you might be wondering too, so there it is. If you want to know more on the subject, I leave you to the library stacks.
Carver’s Legacy
Over time (and partly owing to his speech before Con- gress), Carver became a famous and important man (back then, the meaning of the words famous and important were much more closely aligned than they are today, and his efforts attracted the attention of many other famous and important people. He became close friends with Henry Ford, for example. In fact, their affection was so great that late in Carver’s life, when he became frail, Ford had an elevator installed in Carver’s building at Tuskegee. Further examples of Carver’s famous and important visitors include the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of Sweden, the Vice President of the United States, and (after Booker T. Washington’s funeral), the President as well.
Carver received many awards and other forms of recognition. A museum was built in his honor at Tuske-
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gee; the NAACP gave him an award for outstanding achievement; he was awarded a Roosevelt medal for dis- tinguished service in the fi eld of science; the University of Rochester awarded him a Doctor of Science degree. This list goes on, but in deference to Carver’s own dispo- sition (and if you’ve made it this far, in deference to your time), I want to keep the focus on his more down-to-earth contributions, which I hope you’ve tasted throughout this article.
Toward the end of 1942, Carver fell down a fl ight of stairs and never fully recovered, eventually taking to bed. On January 5, 1943, his friend and Tuskegee’s cook- ing teacher brought him a tray of food from which Carver accepted only a few sips of milk and spoke his last words, “I think I will rest now.” And so he did.
Carver’s epitaph reads: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happi- ness and honor in being helpful to the world.” What an amazing man.
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