He loved to show his students that level of investment of in them, his most important audience, all year long. Every day, he walked to each classroom, and at one point the school had 900 kids! He took pride in his appearance and costumed himself daily in stately clothes, immaculately pressed by my meticulous mother, and spritzed himself with Aramis cologne. He wanted his students, the audience, to know that he viewed their young lives as worthy of his best effort. One little boy at the end of kindergarten said “When I grow up I want to be as tall as Mr. Carnes and smell like him.” Later, that same boy wrote an essay in middle school, about someone who inspired him. His teacher, Robin Miller, brought the essay over to show my mother, the middle school librarian. The boy said Mr. Carnes was his hero because “even when I was bad, he was always good to me.”

Long after his retirement from education, Dad continued to support his students after they left his school. He loved to encourage others from our hometown, or his family, or even the waiter or waitress in a restaurant. Remembering his days working in restaurants in high school and college to put himself through, his first question to every server at a restaurant was “Are you a student?” He would then try to encourage them to pursue whatever their dreams might be. My son Connor often accompanied his grandparents on Saturday morning trips for pancakes, and he said he really missed hearing that familiar question after he was gone.

Whenever our dad heard that someone he knew had accomplished something special, he would beam with pride. He would tell everyone he knew about his student/family member/neighbor who had created beauty to add to this world. Often, he would write them letters or emails of encouragement.

Four years ago, on November 21, 2020, those letters of encouragement stopped coming when our father took his final breath. He passed away from Covid-19 at Baptist East Hospital. He was vulnerable and at risk, due to his pulmonary fibrosis. He had part of a lung removed in 2017, and his stamina and stature had slowly diminished over the next few years. We could not see him due to social distancing, and he barely had the breath to speak. With some of his last words, he took the little breath he had to speak words of encouragement to his grandson Connor over a group family Zoom call to tell him how proud he was of his hard work in high school. The nurse called my mother on the evening of November 21, holding up the phone with a Face time call so that he could tell his beautiful bride of almost 54 years how much he loved her. I peered over my mom’s shoulder, and I could sense instantly the moment his spirit left Earth and ascended to heaven.

Years after his passing, one of his former students from Mt. Washington Elementary, Amanda Matthews created the Covid-19 memorial in Frankfort. On Facebook, I had been following her powerful and internationally recognized work as a sculptor. Not only is her work awe-inspiring in its beauty, but she also strives to represent social issues with compassion through her creativity. Trying to follow in the large footsteps of my father, I sent her a Facebook message to tell her how proud my father would have been of all her accomplishments. Her response brought me to tears: she told me that one of the human figures, the tall older gentleman, was inspired by my father. She said she wanted to represent vulnerable populations, and older people, who are not often shown in sculpture. Our family will be eternally grateful to Amanda for her inclusion of the spirit of our father in her memorial.

She rendered him even taller than his earthly height, almost 6’8”, which is almost the height of his 6’10” grandson. Circular shapes in the installation represent meaningful ideals. The larger globe in the middle of the installation, the smaller orb in the hands of each figure, the circular formation of the humans around the center –
all depict a Circle of Unity, showing the value of love, inclusion and community. Each human has a hole in their chest, representing the grief we feel in our lives once our loved ones have passed on. Inside each hole sits a bell, like the bells that Governor Andy Beshear would ask us to ring in support of our loved ones during the pandemic to know that we are all in this together.

If my father could have known that his former student and office assistant Amanda had used his spirit to inspire her work, he would have beamed as brightly as the sun. The orb in the tall older gentleman’s hands reminds me of my dad, humble and giving and inclusive, serving others comforting food for their bodies, hearts, minds and souls. And the bell reminds me of my father and his love for music and beauty, a song in his heart that will play for others from Earth and from heaven, to soothe our souls with encouragement and love.