Conversation with Weyman Simpson on September 23, 2003
By Ralph Simpson
Weyman told me the story of his older
brother, Herbert, getting shot in the head as a young man. One of the McCurley
boys (Weyman did not remember his first name) shot Herbert in the left temple
with a 45 automatic pistol. There was a disagreement over a girl. The shot
took out a piece of skull about the size of a silver dollar and the bullet
lodged in his brain near the right side of his skull. Herbert went to the
hospital, where they strapped him into a bed to examine him, but he broke the
straps and they had to put more straps on him. They could not operate on him
and the bullet remained in his brain for the rest of his life.
Immediately after returning from the
hospital, Herbert suffered from slurred speech for a while but that went away.
He continued to stutter for the rest of his life. The shooting also left
Herbert with a soft spot on his temple, where you could see his heart beat. He
typically wore a cap or hat to hide this spot. He did suffer from “spells”
from that time onward. He died at a relatively young age of a massive heart attack.