![]() Complementing these qualities were a keen intellect and a sensitive spirit, both of which were reflected in a poem he wrote for Fanny on the occasion of their thirty-seventh wedding anniversary (her fifty-fourth birthday). He was brave to a fault, courageous and strong in his convictions, but fair-minded and profoundly respectful of his adversaries. John was a chivalrous and high-minded man, a cavalier in a society that prized cavaliers. Shortly after the wedding, John and Fanny moved to Atlanta. He had represented Georgia in Congress for many years and was Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs during the Mexican War. In fact, one week later her father, General Hugh Anderson Haralson, died. The wedding was a small, private affair, in her father’s bedroom in deference to his health, which shortly before had taken a bad turn. ![]() The marriage lasted until John’s death on Janualmost 50 years. They were married on September 18, 1854, at Myrtle Hill, the Haralson’s ancestral home near La Grange, Georgia. Theirs was a long and happy marriage, a rarity even in those days, though it wasn’t divorce and dissolution then that brought so many unions to a close, but death, which was often sudden. (for Brown) Gordon and his wife, Fanny Rebecca Haralson. It is filled, too, with human interest stories of which such scenes are a part. Well, the Civil War is filled with such scenes, not surprisingly, given the human drama that comprises this American Iliad. I’m talking about Spencer Tracy grabbing John Carradine’s shirt, under his neck, telling him that he’ll kill him if he lays a finger on the boy, Freddie Bartholomew (Captains Courageous), or Rod Steiger putting a gun into brother Marlon Brando’s ribs in the back seat of a car, pleading with him to “take that job,” the one that will save his life, followed by Brando’s plaintive lament that he could have been a contender (On the Waterfront), or Charles Boyer, Cary Grant and Warren Beatty realizing, at the last split second before walking out on their true loves forever (Irene Dunne, Deborah Kerr and Annette Bening, respectively), that the latter missed their appointment atop the Empire State Building because of an automobile accident (An Affair to Remember, a love story so gripping that it has been filmed three times), and countless others that jerk our tears and put lumps in our throats. I love those touching, poignant scenes that reflect the best that is in us, if not always the strongest.
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