Second of famous waving brothers dies

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This article was published 24/11/2018 (2695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The last Waver is gone.

James Starr died Thursday evening at the Southeast Personal Care Home in Winnipeg.

He was 73.

Starr, along with his brother Nelson Starr, put Scanterbury and Brokenhead Ojibway Nation on the map.

Together, the pair spent more than 20 years standing in the tall grass that separated their home from Highway 59. Four days a week, the brothers waved at passing cars.

The first brother, Nelson Starr, died at age 71 in 2007 and, sometime after that, James retired the custom, but not before they became small-town celebrities known for their friendly greetings to passing motorists.

Their sister, Eunice Galvin, said Saturday from her home in Brokenhead she will remember how friendly her brother always was.

“If he knew someone, Jimmy would always walk up and shake their hand. He was always smiling,” she said.

After Nelson died, she said, her brother was lonely and ill health made it difficult for him to get around. He moved to the Southeast Tribal Council’s personal care home in Winnipeg seven years ago. He died there around 8:30 p.m. Thursday evening.

“I will remember him as he was. He was like a child. He always loved trains and cars and people. He was always very friendly with people,” she said.

The impact the brothers made in the wider world has taken on extra shades of meaning since the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.

“They were doing reconciliation long before many of us,” former Brokenhead chief Jim Bear said Saturday. “Even this past week, my friend who went to Israel heard a couple talking about the two brothers while he was on a tour bus. They were known far and wide.”

A generation of Winnipeggers bound for Grand Beach and surrounding communities slowed their vehicles, waved back, honked their horns and stopped to offer water and gifts.

“There was a quiet dignity to the ditch wavers; an implacable Mona Lisa-like mystery to the matched set of stout men in ball caps,” the late Lindor Reynolds wrote in a Winnipeg Free Press column about the brothers in 2012.

Nobody expected they’d become famous.

When it happened, it was a surprise; it was hard to say who was more delighted: the Starrs, their fans or their community. Brokenhead embraced the pair and motorists did, too.

The Ojibway First Nation, located about 60 kilometres north of Winnipeg, opened a service station and convenience store on Highway 59 and named it Wavers in the brothers’ honour.

Brokenhead resident John Bear built a giant Adirondack chair to remember the pair. A second chair was made as well, and both occupy prominent places in the community to this day.

“They loved the tooting from the horns and the people waving back at them. And people enjoyed that, too,” Galvin said.

She said the two brothers first started waving to passing trains, standing to watch as the cars rattled by on the tracks and raising their hands as the caboose brought up the rear.

When the trains stopped running, the pair shifted their attention to the highway and started waving to passing motorists, which is when the practice came to public attention.

On Facebook on Friday, dozens paid their respects under a post that read “RIP James Starr… If you are driving through Brokenhead Rez, hit you(r) horn. Show support to the family through these tough times. Condolences to the family.”

“I remember both of them growing up on the drive out to Hollow Water. My mom would always tell us kids, ‘Make sure you wave.’” one comment read.

“It was always a pleasure to wave as I passed you and your brother as I drove out to my dad’s,” wrote another poster, who addressed the brothers directly in her condolences. “You and your brother have always made me smile when I passed by you both and I even honked my horn to make sure you both knew I seen youse.”

Galvin said there will be a wake Tuesday at 4 p.m. followed by a funeral Wednesday at 1 p.m. The service will be held at the Private Tom Chief Memorial Hall, across from the South Beach Casino on Highway 59 — close to the spot where the Starr brothers used to stand and wave.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca