Maternal Grandfather(s): Frank Walton. Was in the Navy during World War II. Was dishonorably discharged for reasons still murky to me. He was a severe alcoholic, although a happy-go-lucky one. Has been smoking since the age of 7, and is paying dearly for it now. Still alive, although has less than a year left in him, I suppose. Wonderfully intelligent and spiritual man. He divorced my grandmother sometime back in the fifties, and she married my other grandfather, Arthur Hallman, who died in 1994. He was a submariner in WWII, and he was aboard the submarine that pulled the elder Bush out of the water after his plane was shot down. He was invited to his inauguration, but was too ill from asbestos-related lung cancer to attend. He was the most amazing man I have ever known, and I miss him every day of my life.
Since we’re talking about G-pa’s, I might as well throw this factoid out there. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great (that’s 7) grandfathers on both maternal and paternal sides signed the Declaration of Independence!. Maternal: George Walton. Paternal: Abraham Clark. Check it out here: Signers of the Declaration of Independence
My paternal grandfather was a composer, performer (tuba), and college professor (Carnegie Mellon Univ). He taught music for 20 years before retiring and returning to England with my grandmother. He hadn’t achieved much fame outside of England before passing on in 1995, when I was just starting college at CMU. He was best known for performing the world premier of Ralph Vaughan-Williams’s Tuba Concerto in 1956, with the London Symphony under the baton of Sir John Barbirolli. I also know that he served as some kind of medic in the North Africa Corps.
I never had the opportunity to meet my maternal grandparents. I know my grandfather served in the U.S. Army in WWII but I don’t know much else. He got married only a few months before the Pearl Harbor attack. He was a part owner of the family business, an auto parts store back home, with his older brother. My grand-uncle basically worked him to death, because he had a massive heart attack shoveling snow one winter and his brother was only concerned with who would run the store. He died 30 years ago this Saturday, when he was only 54 years old. My grandmother died 3 1/2 years later, never even knowing that my mother was pregnant with me.
My grand-uncle recently turned 87. We’re still waiting for what goes around to come around.
Paternal Grandfather - Was wealthy in Holland, but poor once they moved here (maybe not such a good move). Worked in various areas including gold mining. Became the first stationary engineer in Manitoba.
Maternal Grandfather - Was in the airforce his whole life. Ran the motor pool.
Actually, Richfield was the site of the old Coliseum, home to the NBA’s Cavaliers for a while. The buzzards are celebrated for returning to Hinckley, where my dad once taught school. Dad’s father, who came from a long line of musicians, taught piano and accordion in his Cleveland home. He also played instruments at bars (including speakeasies), nightclubs, weddings, etc. His father (my great-grandfather) was performing at the Temple of Music when President McKinley was assassinated during Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition of 1901.
Mom’s father, as I mentioned in a recent General Questions thread, was a minister in the Evangelical and Reformed Church. He helped spearhead the E & R/Congregationalist merger that produced the United Church of Christ, and later served as the chairman of the UCC’s Committee on Christian Social Action.
Maternal Grandfather:
Was drafted for WWII out of high school, in 1945. While he was there, he drove trucks up and down the west coast of Europe taking war criminals/POWs to different places. After he came back, he got his GED, went to college, then became a bricklayer. He laid the foundation for his house. I’m not sure how long he did that, but eventually he started teaching shop at the local high school, which he did for 30-some years. I recall seeing a news article where they talked about how he was teaching shop to girls (imagine!).
Maternal Grandmother:
She wanted to become a chemist, but that wasn’t really an option for a black woman in the South in the 40s/50s, so she became an elementary school teacher for 41 years, IIRC.
Paternal Grandfather:
Was drafted into WWII in the Navy, but got TB and had part of one of his lungs removed. He worked after that, but I’m not really sure what he did.
Paternal Grandmother:
Ended up having five children, but only my father was by my grandfather. She went to college (must’ve been night school, because my oldest aunt was born when she was a teenager). I’m not sure what she did after that.
On my dad’s side, Grandpa was an accountant and also a member of the Rescue Squad, which he continued to do until just a few months before his death.
On my mom’s side, Poppa did a number of things including being a Dean at Penn State.
This thread, which I only now have discovered, is second only in my heart to coldfire’s 1945 “We will remember” thread. I can only post after I clear away the tears that roll down my cheeks.
My paternal grandfather I never met. He died around 1935. Consumption or whatever it was at the time. He had been a furniture store employee. His wife, my grandmother, was the typical father’s mother from Hell. She was a typical farm-raised, depression seasoned lady, stern as a stick, and about as humorless. But she taught me some values which I cherish today(you sure can’t appreciate them when you’re (12-16).
My paternal grandfather was employed his whole life by the Danville(VA) Lumber Company. When I was probably 10, he would take me to the lumber company for the day in the Summer… His wife, my lovely grandmother, would make us a breakfast at 6 in the am, and we would get to work at 7. She packed a lunch. Usually just a sandwich of lunchmeat. but some days a fried fruit pie. We kept it over the boiler in the engine room. It would be hot at lunch time. I learned that a guy could pee into a stream that flowed under the building. There was this alcove that one did that in. The candy machines all took a nickel for a candy bar. The Coke machine(hey! this was the South. The machine had 10 kinds of drinks. they were a nckel. I loved the “Brownie chocolate” drink). My grandfather could turn a baseball bat on a lathe so that we had one to play ball with the next day. If we broke it, he simply turned another one. He listened to Carolina League baseball every night in his backyard. I sat in his lap and watched the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, Wednesday Night Fights(Boxing), pulling out his pocket watch to time the intermissions between the rounds. He chewed tobacco. He spat. His “spit cup” was disgusting. He smoked a pipe. He died of lung cancer.
I only just found this out recently. My maternal grandfather was the Managing Director of a Coca-Cola plant in South Africa.
My paternal grandfather had a few peasant jobs that I can’t remember at this point. But he wasn’t well off by any means.
Quite a contrast huh? Both my grandmothers were housewives.
My maternal grandparents are still alive, but my paternal ones aren’t.
Except for his time serving in the Navy during the war, in the Pacific, grandpa worked all his life in the Pennsylvania steel mill that closed its doors forever scant months after he retired.
Paternal Grandfather: Owned a quarry, a warehouse and some shops in and arounf Belfast. Retired at 35 and trained his brother’s racehorses. Self-made man.
Paternal Grandmother: Housewife.
Maternal Grandafather: Was a judge in Germany until forced to leave (he was Jewish). Ended up in South Africa working on a chicken farm until he learnt English, then he was an Accountant in Gweru in Zimbabwe.
Maternal Grandmother: Worked as a nanny and a “lady’s companion” until she married, housewife from then on.
My maternal grandfather lost his mother shortly after birth to the Spanish Flu and his father at 4… so he was brought up by a stepfather from hell. Given no schooling, he took work as a shepherd at a very young age, before others began to even read or write. In time he turned to farming.
Married late, and became a widower much too soon as his wife (owner of her own barber shop) lost the battle with cancer at age 52. She did bear him 7 children in their brief time together though, and they got themselves a prime piece of land for their farm. As his wife got the diagnosis two years to live, the government order him to give up his farm (they all but stole it away) in compensation for a measly couple years worth of pay. Today that plot of land is worth several hundred million dollars. He got through all the bad hands life dealt him somehow though, and never grew bitter. Remained as kind and lovable a man as ever you’ll meet untill his dying day when I was 14.
My paternal grandfather built dams in his youth. After his father and elder brother were killed in Auschwitz by the Nazis, he took over their small farm. His wife’s brother was taken by the russians and spent 13 years in the Gulags, being released only when Stalin died in '53. Anyways, they were good people and managed to raise four healthy kids, but had some hard times. Granddad and his wife both met with the bottle and had a hard time putting it down. Both died in their sixties while I was very young.
Paternal Grandfather: Master joiner (carpenter) & house builder
Paternal Grandmother: Auxiliary nurse & housewife
Maternal Grandfather: Sign-painter and artist (also played harmonica in a band)
Maternal Grandmother: Secretary to the Queen (in Hillsborough, NI)- received MBE for her services.
As Manager of Engineering with the C.D. Howe Company, my paternal grandfather designed and built Canada’s first nuclear research reactor.
As a Regional Head with the New Brunswick Hydro electric Commission, my maternal grandfather brought electricity to his region of New Brunswick.
Paternal Grandfather:
Coal miner all his life. Had low expectations of his children; my father had to run away from home to avoid becoming a coal miner too.
Maternal Grandfather:
A HighSchool football hero, he became a Dr. at a young age and then went to war (WWI). He Developed surgical techniques in trench field hospitals and logged them in his diary (fascinating reading) along with their effectiveness. Mustard gas took him off active duty.
After the war, he was a Dr. during the Depression. Family stories abound of his generosity: My grandmother was startled one day when he ran into the kitchen & took the turkey that was cooking right out of the oven and started leaving with it. Explaining about it, he mentioned that he’d just seen a family of patients that hadn’t eaten in 3 days. Supposedly my grandmother was upset, not at the loss of the turkey, but at the loss of the cooking pan, which she knew she’d never again.
Maternal Grandfather: Worked on the railways all his life. When WW2 started he was too old to be enlisted, but he volunteered and ended up loading bombs on the Lancaster bombers. Went back to the railways after the war. He died when I was a baby.
Paternal Grandfather: Farmer who spent the years of The Emergency (no WW2 in Ireland) as a black marketeer, running tea and sugar (and probably sundry substantially less innocuous items) across the border to Northern Ireland in a hearse. He died when my father was seventeen, so I never met him, but the thing that amazes me most is that he died without ever having seen the sea.
Maternal Grandfather: Speech pathologist and therapist who worked in a few hospitals in St. Louis and the Upper Midwest. Now retired and living in Florida with my stepgrandmother.
Paternal Grandfather: Worked at Ford in Detroit in his teens and 20’s, and later became the city electrician for River Rouge (a suburb). Now in an assisted living home in Downriver Detroit.
Paternal grandfather: Diesel locomotive repairman in Altoona, Pennsylvania; he and my grandmother moved to Sacramento after my father got out of the air force and married my mom, then settled near Merced.
Maternal grandfather: Telephone lineman, he ran the first phone line into Yosemite. After he retired from that, he ran a walnut & almond orchard in Merced.
My maternal grandfather worked in a textile mill. He died in 1938 (or '39) as the result of burns received in a fire in some “*work-related accident,” leaving behind a widow and 4 children from 7 months to 7 years old.
My paternal grandfather worked at a rock quarry in the same town. He died in 1956 at age 72, four years before I was born.
My maternal grandfather was left on the steps of a foundling home in New York City in 1889 as a newborn infant with his name pinned to his clothing. He was sent at about age 7 as an indentured orphan to a Nebraska farm family, who treated him very well but turned him loose at age 21 with a new suit of clothes and $100, per his indenture contract, and it was many years before he understood why they did it – he thought he’d been adopted. He was a sweet man, nicknamed “Happy,” who struggled with odd jobs on Mississippi riverboats during the Depression but managed to keep his family afloat. My earliest memory is from age 3, of my mother crying when she read the letter (we were in India at the time) informing her of his death.
My maternal grandmother was an amazing woman. Dropped out of school at age 9 when her family’s house burned down, went to work to help support the family. She worked as a live-in maid/nanny/cook for a wealthier family – took care of their four kids, did all the cooking cleaning, etc., for $5 a week. One of my treasured possessions is a letter she wrote me describing this, in which she mentions doing all this in the Nebraska summer in long-sleeved, high-necked dresses, two petticoats, and wool stockings. She ends with, “And they call them the ‘Good Old Days’!!” 
She spent most of her life doing odd jobs to help raise money. During the Depression, she’d do laundry (by hand on a washboard) and make hominy to sell. Her kids never went hungry one single time. As a senior citizen, she got a job as companion to the richest old lady in town, whose family was so thrilled with her they paid her handsomely while providing all her living expenses, so she banked it all and spent the last ten years of her life traveling around and seeing the world. She went to Hawaii yearly to visit her youngest son, who treated her like a queen when she was out there (anybody in Hawaii, that’s Dave Donnelly, the gossip columnist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin – he could treat her like a queen because he got so many freebies!). She deserved every minute of it, I might add!
My paternal grandfather was raised on a cattle ranch outside Fort Worth; his father had ridden the Chisholm trail before settling down to ranching, and his uncle had ridden the Pony Express between Fort Worth and Weatherford. Grandpappy (as he insisted we call him, to my grandmother’s horror – she had a FIT when he suggested we call her “Grandmammy” :D) was always happy-go-lucky, had fun in life. He played semi-pro baseball; the highlight of his career (as a pitcher) was an unassisted triple play. At various times he worked in the Tarrant County Clerk’s office, sold furniture at Montgomery Ward’s, and had his own feed store (where, in spite of being a member of the KKK as was really a social necessity at one point in his life, still insisted on waiting in all customers in the order they came in, black or white). He also had a “money tree” growing in his back yard – he could go over and pick off the dollar bills that grew on it. I think I was a teenager before I stopped searching that tree for money!
My paternal grandmother is still going strong at age 102. Her eyes and hearing aren’t so good, and she’s quite frail and lives in an assisted living center, but her mind is as good as ever. Woe betide the person who promises her they’ll do something and then forgets to do it! She spent her whole life as a housewife, except for a brief period before her marriage where she worked in a department store and then worked at the “Oil Field Supply Company.” She gave me a lovely cut glass pitcher and tumblers that were a wedding present to her from the staff there when she got married in 1919. We figure she’s going to hold out for the Oldest Woman in America award; she’s only got 12 years to go, the current holder of the title only being 114!!
know nothing abt my maternal grandfather.
paternal grandfather was a fisherman before the war, turned to plastering after it.
Fishing industry had more or less died in the town where he lived.
And as regards with more info as you stated in your OP: my father and his two sisters only talk about the past and how good it was, and the extended family at their father’s side…
I’m sick and tired of hearing the same stories over and over again…
if you want you can borrow my dad for a while.
