Arcozy Gentle - Names With Meaning
Some names arrive like heirlooms; others are chosen like vows.
When RKZ Gentle was born on 22 September 1870 in Davidson County, North Carolina, her father— Richmond Baxter Gentle, who had enlisted at sixteen as a private in Company A, 21st North Carolina Infantry, Confederate Army in January 1864 and first been wounded just four months later in the Battle of Plymouth, North Carolina—held his infant daughter and listened to news that reached all the way from Europe: Clara Barton, the famed “Angel of the Battlefield,” (1865 photo portrait by Matthew Brady at right) had traveled abroad and come into contact with the fledgling International Red Cross in Switzerland, the humanitarian movement taking shape around Geneva and the new idea that the wounded should be cared for—no matter which side they fought for.
Ambulances and Stretcher Bearers Waiting for Battle to Begin
He could not go back and undo the pain and suffering he had seen and personally experienced, nor could he repay the hands that had steadied the dying and dressed the shattered. But he could make one small promise in the only way a father can on the first day of his child’s life: by the name he spoke over her.
As he was pondering his proposed small statement, U.S. newspapers published a letter from Clara Barton about the new International Red Cross organization.
From the Dutch phrase Rode Kruis Ziekenhuis—“Red Cross Hospital”—he drew the initials RKZ, and he paired them with Gentle, his family surname that, in that moment, became a tribute. Her name would stand as a quiet memorial to the nurses, volunteers, and relief workers who risked everything to reach the battlefield wounded, and to the new Red Cross ideal that Clara Barton would bring home to America when she founded the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. on 21 May 1881.
RKZ Gentle (18), alternatively spelled “Arcozy” as it was pronounced, married Joseph Jenkins Sink (23) on 25 December 1888 in Davidson County, North Carolina. The couple had 3 daughters, four sons, 13 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren when RKZ gently passed away in 1960 at the age of 89.
