Eastex Advocate - News
Stumbling upon historical events has turned into book for local resident
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| A lifetime member of the VFW Post No. 4816, Cleveland resident Frank Griffin will sign his newly published book "Touched By Fire" there Saturday, Nov. 15. |
By RYAN HICKMAN
When Frank Griffin embarked on telling the story of his life entangled in history-changing events, the Cleveland resident’s biggest worry wasn’t remembering all the details of the occurrences but whether or not people would buy into the truth.
“The question in my mind is, who is going to believe it?” Griffin asked.
There are a pair of high-profile assassinations that he and his kin have been witness to and those seemingly astonishing instances are what thread together his newly-published book “Touched By Fire.”
Griffin’s father Johnnie Frank Griffin, who abandoned Frank, his mother and sister at an early age, serendipitously caught the before and after scenes of Albert Patterson’s death in Phenix City, Ala. in 1954 with his own eyes.
Patterson was set to take over the state’s attorney general office when he was slain by high-ranking law enforcement officials with deep ties in the area’s organized crime.
After months of silence, Frank’s father told the authorities what he saw and even though the author never spent any time with his father, he tried get inside of his head more than 50 year ago.
“Maybe Johnnie Frank was finally realizing that he wanted to leave something behind in this world besides a path of broken hopes. Maybe he was finding religion,” Griffin wrote in the book. “Whatever it was, Johnnie Frank began to talk.”
And his testimony led to his stabbing death a day after testimony to the grand jury.
The events in Phenix City so long ago have brought Frank and Patterson’s son John, who took over his dad’s position as attorney general and was eventually elected governor of Alabama, together in common friendship. So close they are that Griffin will call him on a whim from a newspaper editor’s office.
“The book is a good read and very accurate,” the 87-year-old former governor said over the phone last week. “Frank has had an unusual life.”
The most peculiar happenstance in Griffin’s own life occurred when he was working as a bricklayer’s assistant in Dallas in November 1963.
Griffin had a transistor radio with him that day, Nov. 22, when President John F. Kennedy was traveling through the city and heard the horrific news. What was more shocking was what he heard next: gun shots within earshot and he headed towards the sharp sounds from his job site.
Griffin turned down the street to see a police officer — J.D. Tippet — laying on the ground and a man rushing away — Lee Harvey Oswald.
“He lay on his back, arms folded on top of his chest,” Griffin wrote in the book about coming up on Tippet, who was dead. “His cap lay under his head, blood pooling on the pavement. He had on a wristwatch with a silvery metal band.... Those are the things I remember.”
These tales have been etched in Griffin’s mind for decades and he thought it was about time to get them down on paper.
“There’s not one day that has gone by that I haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for 45 years.”
Two years ago, at the urging of John Patterson and Harry Franklin, the former editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia, Griffin began the process of getting he and his daddy’s story into a book.
In came writer Peter Heyrman and the pair crafted the accounts of the two assassinations, with plenty of research, with Griffin’s journey through a downtrodden and drifting life between 1954 and 1963 as the backdrop. It’s as much a story about being poor and forgotten in the Deep South during a strange time as it is about stumbling upon history.
But through all his time here, 29 years now in the Houston area including Splendora, and now with his story between two soft covers, Griffin is still in shock about the peculiar events that have been the narrative of his life.
“I don’t believe it myself,” Griffin said, “and I’ve been through it.”
Book Signing
Frank Griffin, a lifetime member of the VFW Post 4816 in Porter, will be signing copies of his book “Touched By Fire” (Bear Press) at the VFW Saturday, Nov. 15.
“The question in my mind is, who is going to believe it?” Griffin asked.
There are a pair of high-profile assassinations that he and his kin have been witness to and those seemingly astonishing instances are what thread together his newly-published book “Touched By Fire.”
Griffin’s father Johnnie Frank Griffin, who abandoned Frank, his mother and sister at an early age, serendipitously caught the before and after scenes of Albert Patterson’s death in Phenix City, Ala. in 1954 with his own eyes.
Patterson was set to take over the state’s attorney general office when he was slain by high-ranking law enforcement officials with deep ties in the area’s organized crime.
After months of silence, Frank’s father told the authorities what he saw and even though the author never spent any time with his father, he tried get inside of his head more than 50 year ago.
“Maybe Johnnie Frank was finally realizing that he wanted to leave something behind in this world besides a path of broken hopes. Maybe he was finding religion,” Griffin wrote in the book. “Whatever it was, Johnnie Frank began to talk.”
And his testimony led to his stabbing death a day after testimony to the grand jury.
The events in Phenix City so long ago have brought Frank and Patterson’s son John, who took over his dad’s position as attorney general and was eventually elected governor of Alabama, together in common friendship. So close they are that Griffin will call him on a whim from a newspaper editor’s office.
“The book is a good read and very accurate,” the 87-year-old former governor said over the phone last week. “Frank has had an unusual life.”
The most peculiar happenstance in Griffin’s own life occurred when he was working as a bricklayer’s assistant in Dallas in November 1963.
Griffin had a transistor radio with him that day, Nov. 22, when President John F. Kennedy was traveling through the city and heard the horrific news. What was more shocking was what he heard next: gun shots within earshot and he headed towards the sharp sounds from his job site.
Griffin turned down the street to see a police officer — J.D. Tippet — laying on the ground and a man rushing away — Lee Harvey Oswald.
“He lay on his back, arms folded on top of his chest,” Griffin wrote in the book about coming up on Tippet, who was dead. “His cap lay under his head, blood pooling on the pavement. He had on a wristwatch with a silvery metal band.... Those are the things I remember.”
These tales have been etched in Griffin’s mind for decades and he thought it was about time to get them down on paper.
“There’s not one day that has gone by that I haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for 45 years.”
Two years ago, at the urging of John Patterson and Harry Franklin, the former editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia, Griffin began the process of getting he and his daddy’s story into a book.
In came writer Peter Heyrman and the pair crafted the accounts of the two assassinations, with plenty of research, with Griffin’s journey through a downtrodden and drifting life between 1954 and 1963 as the backdrop. It’s as much a story about being poor and forgotten in the Deep South during a strange time as it is about stumbling upon history.
But through all his time here, 29 years now in the Houston area including Splendora, and now with his story between two soft covers, Griffin is still in shock about the peculiar events that have been the narrative of his life.
“I don’t believe it myself,” Griffin said, “and I’ve been through it.”
Book Signing
Frank Griffin, a lifetime member of the VFW Post 4816 in Porter, will be signing copies of his book “Touched By Fire” (Bear Press) at the VFW Saturday, Nov. 15.
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