The old year ends and the new year begins, a seamless road towards eternity. So as we prepare for that endless prospect, it’s good to remember those that have already entered it.

I was sitting with my father at the dinner table a few weeks ago, surrounded by family. Memory calls most after it has been fed, and calls best after a holiday meal. At such times, old relations who can visit us only through time-worn tales are summoned forth again.

So my father told a story of his own grandfather—one I had heard often but that astounds me every time it’s related. The moral dilemma is a perfect example of what can face a human being, a tale positively Greek in both its heroic and tragic components.

His name was Jones McWhorter, and he lived in Houston, Mississippi. He had a fine job as a railroad foreman—an occupation hard to come by in the depths of the 1930s depression. A whole stretch of the Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio track was given to his oversight, and he had many men under his command. His salary provided for a wife, six children, and a good-sized Victorian home. So while others were in want throughout that era, Jones was relatively prosperous.

A religious man, his priorities were in order, and his family was a model of rectitude.

Unfortunately, the fates had something planned for them. Several black men were employed by that railroad, men directly under Jones’ oversight. A proposition was soon put forward by the powers that be: Jones was to fire the blacks and hire some whites instead, men who desperately needed jobs, in their place.

Jones’ reply was as you’d hope: his current employees had performed ably; they deserved their employment as much as any; times were tough for white and black alike. His answer was no.

But then the proposition was put forward again, in stronger terms. It was no longer a request that he do as asked, but a directive. No one was immune from the hard choices that had to be made. White men needed the jobs and blacks could fend for themselves. Nevertheless, Jones refused once more.

The third time—it is always three times in stories, isn’t it?—the order was of a different nature altogether: Fire the blacks, hire the whites, or be fired yourself.

The decision Jones McWhorter had to make did not merely affect him and the black men who worked for him. It involved Jones’ wife too, and his six children—one of them my grandmother—and even the generations that followed.

But when the order was made the third time, he rose to the occasion, just as we all would have him do—in a good story. The third time, his answer was the same as the first. He said no.

And that is where the story should end, shouldn’t it?

It should be resolved with high-minded platitudes and people coming to their senses. It should end with the bad guys punished and the good guys rewarded.

But it did not.

Because of his answer, Jones was indeed fired. Further, the black men were also fired. What happened to them, no one can rightly say. So nothing actually came of Jones’ stand, except that he himself was not part of the injustice.

Still, he and his family suffered the penalty as long as they lived. He not only lost his job and the right to work at any other for which he was trained, but he also lost his house, and his wife and children lost the lives they had known. Impoverishment was to be their lot.

Jones took to farming, a vocation for which he had no talent, and he was only able to scrape by living in a tenant house. Years later, my grandparents had to take him and his wife groceries just so they could make it through the week. The hard existence took its toll on his body, and he eventually lost his eyesight altogether.

So there is no storybook ending; none except that he was a man of good spirits and deep faith and no known regrets. He did not complain. He took his comforts where he found them and always displayed the impeccable manners of a man whose fortunes were better. He rose whenever a lady came in the room, though he could not see her do so. In the fashion of the day, he always kissed their hands.

“But should he have done what he did?” it was often asked. There was some resentment towards him, for costing the family so much; his children suffered in truly epic ways that I cannot even relate.

If you know that nothing good can come of what you do, is it right to gamble with the lives of others? Should you stand on principle only when no one else is risked in the posture? Perhaps prudence was called for. I wouldn’t fault those who thought so.

Then again, it is easy to make such fine distinctions when you have perfect knowledge, and when it is not your own integrity at stake.

There are many stories of bad folks in the South, which God knows there were and are yet (there are everywhere, I might add). Those seem to be the only ones anybody wants to hear. You’ll never go broke telling them.

But there are many stories like this one too—of decency that came at great, and maybe even too great, a cost. And in the end, I find myself very proud of a man whose blood I carry, one that was more than willing to pay that cost.

To my way of thinking, the story ends where it should. And it is worth an eternity in the telling.

(A version of this piece appeared in Climb High, Climb Far, Fireside Press, edited by Gregory and Suzanne M. Wolfe)