Today is my grandfather's birthday. A man who married and had children a little later in life, he was born 124 years ago, in 1896. Granddaddy was 66 when I was born, and despite his energy and independence, he seemed pretty old to us when we were kids. He smoked cigars and a pipe and always wore a tie and a fedora when he left the house; he was a past commander of the local American Legion post, a big booster of youth baseball (there is a league named for him in Maryland), and he thought Archie Bunker was hilarious.
My granddad died the year I was 20, and when I think of him now it seems impossible that I could personally have known and loved someone who was born such a long time ago. He served in WWI, lost a business after the stock market crash of 1929, scrabbled hard to make a living during the depression, and moved the family to Washington, DC at the beginning of WWII, when my grandmother got a job at the Pentagon.
He was in his early twenties during the last pandemic. In fact his mother died of influenza, but not until 1928. She was only 60 then, just a couple of years older than I am now. And the 95 years that separate us in time somehow don't seem quite so unbridgeable as they might have just a few months ago.
My granddad died the year I was 20, and when I think of him now it seems impossible that I could personally have known and loved someone who was born such a long time ago. He served in WWI, lost a business after the stock market crash of 1929, scrabbled hard to make a living during the depression, and moved the family to Washington, DC at the beginning of WWII, when my grandmother got a job at the Pentagon.
He was in his early twenties during the last pandemic. In fact his mother died of influenza, but not until 1928. She was only 60 then, just a couple of years older than I am now. And the 95 years that separate us in time somehow don't seem quite so unbridgeable as they might have just a few months ago.
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