Tell me about your grandpa

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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My maternal grandfather died when I was about 4. I do have one memory of him eating oatmeal at my grandmother’s house. I do know a few things about him that I’ve been able to piece together, though:

He has got to be one of the first people to own a computer. He worked from his home, selling law books, and he kept his records on a bunch of 8 inch (not 5 and a quarter, 8 inch) floppies. I got some of them when my grandmother was clearing out his office, and there are dates as early as 1978. This man was old enough to be a WWII veteran, and he started using computers in compartively old age, before they were popular. That’s just cool.

He was a WWII veteran. Apparantly, he drove generals around in armored cars.

From what my grandma and mom tell me, he loved to talk. He could talk for hours about anything, and he was well versed in many subjects.

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My maternal grandpa: (1911 - 1939) Not much to talk about, other than he died from severe burns several days after a “transformer accident.” He left behind a 26-year-old widow and four children ranging from 7 years old down to seven months.

My paternal grandpa: (1882 - 1956) Not much to talk about there, either. Neither my dad nor his eight siblings ever talked about him. He worked at a rock quarry most of his life. Well, my dad and one uncle both did say that he was real gullible about TV, believing that pro rasslin’ was real, but that’s about it. Oddly, they did talk much more about their grandparents,

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Paternal Grandfather: Never knew him. He died in 1944 when I was not yet two years old. He was a physician. Practiced out of his home on Franklin Street in Cleveland. He had served as a medical officer in the Philippine Insurrection and again during WWI. From the photograph I have of him he was a very proper Edwardian gentleman, bull necked and square headed (a family trait) with nose pincher wire framed glasses. My father looked a lot like him.

Maternal Grandfather: a tall, thin smiling man with a tremendous story. He died when I was in college so I knew him pretty well. He grew up in Chicago. His father had abandon him and his mother when he was still a baby. The old man went west and died when he got wrapped up in a barbed wire fence in the middle of a blizzard some place in Nebraska. His mother made sure Grandpa got through high school and then he went to work as a traveling sales man with a ready made mens clothing company. He fell in love with the step daughter of an immigrant cheese broker but didn’t have the means to marry here until 1912 when he opened his own clothing store in Decorah, Iowa (exclusive outlet for Oskosh overalls). My mother was born in 1915. He was a great old guy. A good horseman who kept a saddle horse until he was well past 70. He was a leading citizen, a big cheese in the volunteer fire department (no hoses off the truck until the liquor come out) and a regular at the Elks Club (where a man could quench a thirst). He was as kind and generous and, considering his wife, and patient and long suffering a man as I have had the pleasure of knowing. He loved Fanny Farmer toffies and good roast beef cooked to shoe leather.

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Paternal Grandpa: Part Polish, part Mongolian. Immigrant to America in the early 1900’s. Always doing experiments in the basement, trying to prove how satellites stayed in orbit. had gyroscopes tied to string and he’d spin them around. Nice guy, too. Then Alzheimer’s set in and we lost him, but got to keep his body for a few more years. He looked oriental - epicanthic eye folds, yellowish skin, but he was tall.

Maternal Grandpa: Polish. Immigrant. Worked for Yale Lock Co. Lived by the woods and whenever we kids came by he’d take us for walks. The birds used to come when he called them and sit on his shoulders. He was some kind of herbalist, too. He tended wild and cultivated plants and performed wierd ceremonies with circles of stones, small fires and plants for… incense, I guess. He would have us drink his herbal mixtures on occasion. Never hurt, so I guess he knew what he was doing. When I think of him I feel like he’s here with me, smiling, loving.

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OK, Grandmas too. Well, here goes.

Paternal grandmother (1913-1969): She was diagnosed with TB when she was 6 and her parents moved to Arizona in hopes her condition would improve in the hot dry air. It worked (or perhaps the TB was a misdiagnosis.) Later, after she married my grandfather, she would develop a strong fondness for hard liquor and do a stint in rehab. After that she only drank beer. About all I remember of her is that when I was about 4 she had several friends over and I had a bag of jellybeans and had been taught it was nice to share. I offered everyone jellybeans and they all graciously accepted them except for my grandmother, who thought it would spoil her diet. Not knowing what a diet was, I thought this was strange. She died of a stroke a few weeks later.

Maternal Grandmother (1900-1972): Her father was a sheriff in a small Georgia town and she lived at home until she met my grandfather in 1930. When my grandfather died she had to look after her daughters herself (her youngest, my mother, was 7.) The family was poor but my mother managed to go to college on a scholarship. Grandma was rather racist but I remember her as being very sweet and kind, though uneducated and a worrier. She hated to cook (both my grandmothers did) and was glad when instant foods started to become popular in the 50’s and 60’s. Too bad she didn’t live to see the microwave.

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My grandpas died when my parents were teenagers, so I have never known. They were both car salesmen…I think.

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Maternal: Alcoholic farm laborer who died from liver disease in his 30’s, leaving behind a wife and six kids. Wife raised the family by opening one of the few female owned businesses in Minneapolis, MN in the 40’s. The kids turned out great, one USAF colonel, one NASA engineer, a HS valecdictorian (my mom), and all the others did just fine. Never met him.

Paternal: Alcoholic railroad worker, South Boston. Lived into his late 70’s, and raised a good brood. One diplomat, a VP of Monsanto, one very sucessful tradesman, two daughters who were educated and married well. Met him a couple of times but don’t remember him. He died before I turned five.

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Oh, both Irish immigrants. (Did I need to say that?)

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Paternal Grandfather- hardworking oldest brother of four. Worked during the week in the United States and on the weekends traveled back home to Mexico to his family.-Quiet, strong and fair minded. Died of Lou Gehrigs 16 years ago at the age of 72.

Maternal Granfather- Spoiled only child of a very rich Mexican couple. Was accustomed to servants, riding and raising race horses and never worked a day in his life. His parents built the small town they lived in, brought the railroad, a teacher to the school and built the only church in that town. When my grandfather would come to town as a young man, he would raise hell and lock the sheriff in his jail while he partied. He would come home to his ranch with Mariachis and everyone would have to wake up because he was up. He had another woman and family in town besided my grandma and spent a whole month in Juarez in the nicest hotel with the other woman until he ran out of money and then he went home to his wife. She worked two jobs and raised 9 children and he sat outside smoking and drinking coffee. He died 5 years ago with Alzheimers and he still believed he was out on the ranch. Oh and he buried a car in the desert and hid gold bullion in a church behind a statue of the virgin. But those are stories for another time. :wink:

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Paternal grandfather was a tool-and-die maker in Chicago, who died one month before I was born. When I was little, several people told me my grandfather had left me his dimples, and I somehow conjured up a vivid memory of finding some dimples on the dining room table and affixing them to my cheeks. I didn’t think about it often, so I was a teenager before it occurred to me that it wasn’t a real memory.

Maternal grandfather was a draper in Chicago who was born in Brooklyn to parents who had only just emigrated from Italy. He was married before he met my grandmother, and had a 13-year old daughter who was killed in a bus accident. His wife, pregnant at the time of the daughter’s death, went into shock and early labor. Grandpa delivered his second daughter, who was stillborn, and his wife died minutes later. He lost his whole family in the course of three days. He married my grandmother some five years later, and they had four children - one son, then a set of triplets. One of the triplets was stillborn, the others were my mother and another son. Grandma (who is insane, but that’s another story) divorced him and he remarried again, and he and his third wife had four more children. When he died in 1991, he had 37 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. When each of his grandchildren reached the age of two, Grandpa would take them on his lap and show them how to lick their finger and stick it in the sugarbowl.

Step-paternal grandfather was a dentist with a bad temper, a wicked sense of humor and a missing finger. He managed to play the piano quite well without it, and had a white baby grand piano in his dental office and a sign on the door to the X-ray room that said, “Darkroom - please keep door closed so the dark doesn’t get out.” He was also a trivia buff and a mean Scrabble player - I get my love of games from him.

Maternal step-grandfather - another tool-and-die maker who died from asbestos-linked cancer on my eighth birthday. All I really remember about him was that together he and I picked out a ring for my grandmother: a heart-shaped Russian amethyst that I just inherited this past year.

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What a great way to turn around a sobering, heartaching subject, Maxie. :slight_smile: For now I’ll just talk about Papa Carl, the one I was referring to in the OP.

Papa Carl (1913-2000) lived a life Hollywood wouldn’t believe. If I wrote it as a script, it would be sent back to me as being unrealistic. He married my grandmother (and wife of 69 years) in 1931, when he was just 18 and she was 16. A year later, their first son was born. Two years later, his wife was sent to a sanitorium as she had TB. Two years after that, she returned to a son who was afraid of her and didn’t recognize her. In time, he readjusted to her. They bought him a shiny new tricycle for Christmas 1936, even though the didn’t have the money for it, really. A few weeks later he contracted meningtis…and died just after his fifth birthday. This was during the great Ohio River flood–and they couldn’t bury him. His broken and hollow little body had to be kept in the freezer at the hospital for a month until they could bury him. In the meantime, they lost everything…everything…in the flood. I can’t begin to imagine the hell that that was.

My father was born two years later. When he was 12, my grandmother had a massive aneurism and was rushed to the hospital–where she was pronounced dead on arrival and placed in a morgue. It was her twitching toe a few hours later that alerted hospital workers they were in error. She actually lived nearly three years after my grandfather passed–she was one tough broad.

Back to Papa. He was a genius. I know, everyone’s grandfather is, but I’m not kidding. He wasn’t educated, but he could literally turn trash into anything and amazing at that. He was known throughout his town for this. He was a lover of logic and thinking games, as he called it, and schooled me thoroughly in them. He also loved me. And I knew it. I was “his little girl,” and I knew in his arms I was safe, loved, treasured, and…home. Oh man…I miss his home.

He made dollhouses from scratch, with no kit or guide…just his own know how. (They were gifts for his wife…although my cheapie Fisher Price dollhouse was his inspiration. He knew he could do better.) I inherited a dollhouse and general store that now sit in here with me in my office. The walls are decorated with the many, many framed newspaper and magazine articles and photos about his work–his dollhouses were very well known and made several appearances throughout Ohio. He handmade nearly all the furniture, each individual shingle, each brick, each post of the picket fence. He also used copper tape under the carpet to wire the house for electricity–brilliant.

I can’t say enough. I can’t. Nothing I say will do. No words will capture his essence or soul sufficiently to share it here. But he was wonderful. Far from perfect, but wonderful. And I miss him.

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Paternal Granddad - He was a miner. He died of cancer when I was about 4, so I don’t really remember him.

Maternal Granddad - I didn’t see him often, as he lived in Ireland. He was a police officer. When he was diagnosed with cancer about 3 years ago he moved to England to spend his last few months with his family. A lovely man and very generous.

Mum’s step dad - The Granddad I knew the best, as he lived near by. He was great. He used to make up stories and stuff for me when I was a kid. A lovely man and extremely generous, and quite well off too. (He gave each of his Grandchildren £1000 to help pay for university, and those who don’t go to university are allowed to spend it on what they want.) He was in the army. While in the army he did a bit of boxing, and was very good at it too. When he left the army he became a prison officer.

Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic. And died last year just before Christmas because of “repertory failure caused by excessive alcohol.” Part of me is still pissed off at him about that.

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My maternal grandfather had a 6th grade education, but a genius. He was a self-taught electrician, just sat down with some books and figured it out. He could sing and play any stringed instrument he picked up. He’s my earliest memory; he died when I was 2 and a half.

My paternal grandfather was a drunk and I never met him. He died when I was about 6.

My paternal step-grandfather, who I’ve always known to be my real grandfather, is still alive. He was in the military for umpteen years and is a wonderful man.

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My paternal grandfather was killed in a plane crash somewhere off of the Aleutain Islands in 1945. My dad was born shortly afterwards to my grandmother. My dad was raised pretty much by my grandmother, and my greatgrandparents until he was about 5 or so. That was when my grandmother got remarried to a guy I will always call “Grandpa”. This was the one I got to know when I was a kid. He was also in WWII and flew a bomber. He adopted my dad , then he and my grandmother had 7 more kids. In his civilian life, he worked as an architect in and around the Kalamazoo area and designed many buildings in the area. He died in 1976 of a heart attack. I was only 7 years old at the time, so my memories of him are very few. I do remember him picking me up and showing me pictures of the planes he used to fly.

I am very grateful that I got to know my greatgrandparents. Both were polish immigrants. They lived in downtown detroit. My dad would take us out to visit them for a weekend every year or so. I remember their house very well. We used to call Greatgrandpa “Dziadziu” which is polish for grandpa. He would always go out into the back yard and put bird seed into the feeder so that my brother and I could watch the birds as we ate breakfast in the AM. Grandma would always want us to give her big bear hugs and always made homemade applesauce for us. They also had a collection of tin toys for us to play with. Round about 1980, my greatgrandparents moved to Kalamazoo to live in an assisted living home. Grandma died about 1983. Dziadziu continued to live there by himself, enjoying his Detroit Tigers games and his daily crossword puzzles. In the year before he passed, my dad and I would go and visit him regularly because we knew he wasn’t going to be around forever. He passed away in 1986. I was 17.

My maternal grandfather… probably one of the most unique people I ever knew in my family. He was the 2nd husband of my grandmother. They had six kids. I believe he worked in a metal fabrication plant somewhere in Kalamazoo. Unfortunately he was an alcoholic and smoked well over a pack a day. When we would visit them for Sunday dinner, he would always be parked in front of the TV watching the game, or whatever was on. He was hard of hearing and because of that, had the TV jimmy-rigged with a 2nd speaker that sat right behind his chair so he could hear it. Ah yes… Grandpa’s chair. That’s something I will never forget. Everyone would gather to watch the game in the living room, but nobody EVER sat in Grandpa’s chair. He would be nice about scooting you out, but you got scooted out if you were caught in his chair. Grandpa lived on a lake and loved to go fishing. He had a small row boat with a 4 hp motor he would take out almost daily during the spring and summer to go fishing. He was also quite a good woodworker, which was funny because I don’t think he ever had any formal training in woodworking. One thing about Grandpa was that he was quite a stubborn person when he wanted to be. This worked to his advantage because he decided one day to just stop smoking. The family was amazed because he smoked very heavy. He also quit drinking too. All cold-turkey. He just made up his mind and that was that. Giving up those 2 vices probably added 10 years to his life. But being subborn also worked against him. One time grandma went on a vactation with one of my aunts to visit relatives. When they came back grandpa was laying on his bed, barely able to get up, with red pock marks all over his face and chest. He had the shingles and just wouldn’t go to the doctor. My mom and grandma did finally convince him to go and he did recover. Eventhough grandpa had his quirks, I can say that he genuinely loved everyone in his family, and everyone loved him. I was at his side with the rest of the family when he died at his house on the lake. He died of emphasima. Watching him die was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do, but I am glad I was there for him.

Sorry for rambling on… I just have so many fond memories of my grandparents.

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Paternal Grandfather - died before I was born. I don’t know anything about him.

Paternal Grandmother - One very cool lady. My fiancee describes her as “A Hot Shit”. She must be in her mid to late 60’s but I’m not sure. She married my grandfather when she was 17. She has 5 children, 9 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. She’s very attractive, a good woodworker and a farmer. She and her second husband built a log cabin (which she still lives in). She still has at least one cow but I don’t think she does much with animals anymore.
She’s funny and nice and a good friend.

Maternal Granmother - Physically and emotionally abusive psycho bi***. She currently lives a miserable live in Ohio and I’ve never met her. My mother is 54 and still recovering from the mental trauma.

Maternal Grandfather - One of the nicest, smartest, most caring, gentle people I’ve ever met. He was raised in Brooklyn. He’s the son of two Ukranian immigrants. His father was a shoemaker. He is distantly related to the Romanovs. His ancestors financed the Trans Siberian Railroad. One of his uncles is a famous Yiddish poet. Went into the Army after school. For some reason, they decided to have him teach…medicine. He was good at it though. He’s dyslexic. He’s a genius. He spent most of his life repairing TV’s in a business he owned. He is (or was) on the Civil Rights Commission for NY. He writes a column called Conflicting Opinions for his local newspaper. I don’t know if I’d describe him as Liberal but he is as far from Conservative as you can get (can you tell I don’t know much about politics?). He can’t stand any form of intolerance. He’s the best grandparent a person could ask for. He’s more of a father to my sisters and me than our own father is. Actually, you can add two of my cousins to that. He will do anything for his family or friends. He’s an excellent judge of character. He tells the most amazing stories about everything you can imagine. I love to sit with him for hours while he tells me about his Army days or his ancestors.
He has 4 children with my grandmother and 2 children with his second wife (actually, he adopted her kids). He has 13 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. He’s very active in all of our lives.
I love my grandfather more than you can imagine and I can’t stand the thought of ever not having him around.

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Paternal - 1918-1991. Pap was a cus on the outside, but a very sweet man underneath. He was the sort of guy who’d never go out of the house without being dressed and groomed properly, yet he’d let my aunt do unspeakable things to his hair when she was a little girl (these included bobby pins and curlers). It must have mortified him, but he did it because it was his daughter. Now that I have one, I can relate.

He was a Pittsburgh steelworker with little education, but he was very worldly and had a great deal of sense. It was he that taught me to drive and to shoot. He took me fishing, too, starting when I was four years old.

Pap only had three grandkids, my brothers and my, so we caught all of his attention. We spent a great deal of time with him and my grandmother, who is a very special lady who is still around. I just spent the weekend with her, and brought my twins along.

I miss my grandfather dearly.

Maternal - (1909-2004). I loved my maternal grandfather as well, but didn’t spend nearly as much time with him growing up. Pap had many other grandkids - 22 in all. And of these, he was closer with some than others, though he loved us all.

Pap was a laborer, including a stint at Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore during WWII building Liberty Ships. But most of his life he made his living through illegal gambling, as a lower level street numbers man in the Pittsburgh area. This questionable money was spent honestly, though. He used it to finance his children’s education. Most of his family today reside in the middle or professional class.

Pap was a bowler, one of the finest I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen him rack up 250 games when he was well in his seventies. He kept his average above 200 until he was in his early eighties, and took teams to the ABC tournament for 53 consecutive years.

His tournament 300 ring and watch date from the early 1960’s, an era when 300 games were much harder to come by.

When my grandmother died, she left my grandfather alone with seven grown children. He remarried and started a family with his second wife. At the time of his death he had been married to Carol 37 years, where he had been married to my grandmother for 35. His oldest daughter was 72, his youngest 36. Seven kids were in between.

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My maternal grandfather was born in 1898!!

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My paternal grandfather was born in 1871, the second-oldest son of German immigrants. He died when my dad was 15. He taught school for a while and then was a grain dealer. My dad’s older sister told me she remembered that he didn’t talk to the kids very much and that he loved music.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1895, the son of a harnessmaker/cobbler. His defining moment was WWI. That was the biggest thing that ever happened to him and he loved to talk about it (although I was too young to be interested at the time). Before he enlisted there was some tax someone was trying to collect from him and he wouldn’t pay it, knowing that he was going to enlist soon. He got a kick out of that. His sister died when he was overseas (supposedly in the flu epidemic but I have photos of her in a wheelchir type deal and I don’t think it was the flu) and I’m told he never forgave himself for it. He loved clocks and wood and refinished every stick of furniture that ever crossed his path. He did beautiful work but the Antiques Roadshow people would probably scream. I have a bookcase he fashioned out of the mirror frame and drawers from an old dresser. He also collected barbed-wire, gardened, and fished a lot.

When he got back from the war he worked on a short line railroad, then bought a gas/service station and apparently invested wisely. He wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination but was able to retire at a fairly young age. My grandmother didn’t have a very strong personality and I asked my mom how it came about that they hooked up. She told me that he’d been in love with someone else but his parents didn’t approve of the match. He stuck by her as long as he could though, until she got Alzheimers and he couldn’t take care of her any more. It broke his heart that he had to put her in a nursing home because he’d promised her that he never would. She died shortly after going there and he died shortly after she did.

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I’ve been very fortunate to have four wonderful grandparents in my life!

Paternal grandfather - the man I was named after. I’d like to think I’m as much of a character as he is. He farmed most of his life. His true loves though were fishing, tinkering with his steam engines in the basement, shooting pool, and hunting. He was quite a shootist (?) and once shot an egg out of my grandma’s hand. He was rumored to have made and sold his own moonshine during his younger days. He taught me dirty rhymes such as “The Monkey and the Baboon” and “Fire, Fire, Fierce Alarm.” My favorite picture of me growing up is of me on his lap, both of us with cigarettes hanging out of our mouths (mine was unlit, of course). I’ll always remember him wearing scruffy old overalls and laughing. He died when I was in sixth grade.

Paternal grandmother - still alive and kicking at 86. She has a more active social life than I do. She still lives on her own and drives her own car, and a couple of weeks ago she got a warning for speeding (hee, hee). She’s 100% Norwegian and we always tease her than you can always tell a Norwegian, you just can’t tell 'em much. She’s a bossy one, for sure. She’s an amazing cook and loves to entertain. Her lefse is to die for, as are her homemade donuts. The lutefisk I can live without. She loves to play cards and cribbage, and any other game really. I think she’s going to outlive all of us, just because she can.

Maternal grandfather - I wish I had been able to know him better than I did. He was a World War II veteran who got Parkinson’s Disease when I was pretty little. I really only have one pre-Parkinson’s memory of him, and that is of helping him do chores and riding in the tractor with him on their farm. Even though he couldn’t walk or talk very well in his later years, my grandpa was an extremely positive man. He had a wonderful sense of humor and managed to tease his grandkids without saying a word. Before his Parkinson’s got really bad he would ride his three-wheel bike downtown every day to get the mail. He died when I was in eighth grade.

Maternal grandmother - still alive and kicking at 82. She still lives in the house she and grandpa bought after they had to sell the farm. She makes the most beautiful quilts and has made them for every single one of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren - as well as many other people. She sews these cute little bags for people to hang on their walkers or wheelchairs and donates them to local nursing homes. She’s another great cook. It’s kind of funny, but what I always look forward to the most is her red and green finger Jell-O (Jell-O Jigglers) at Christmas. I think I get my bargain-hunting gene from her. She’s always finding the best deals, and loves going to garage sales. Although I’ve had my differences with her in the past, I’ve come to appreciate, as an adult, what a wonderful person she is.

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Oh, right. You guys can’t see me! :wally

This might be more astounding if you knew that I’m only 35!