Part of the Greatest Generation
We lost my grandfather today. He had been on this earth for 94 years. Was a member of the Greatest Generation. Was an amazing man. Shaped a lot of how I saw things, sometimes through his own silence he taught me new ways to see things.
On his behalf, I am going to do a series of stories that come from him.
Today, will be an overview, so to speak, an insight into a man who had many different chapter s in his life story, and maybe my daughter can just steal this page for her family tree story.
The man I grew up calling grandpa was born in San Diego, but never lived there. In an era where women returned home to deliver babies so they had support, my grandfather’s mom returned to deliver little Robert where her mother lived. And at two weeks old he returned to the Inglewood area of Los Angeles. He attended LAUSD schools, including Harte Middle School and Washington High School.
And then World War II happened. My grandfather became a bomber pilot. He was stationed out of India. While there waiting for orders he learned Punjab. I remember as a child he would tell me common sayings he used during his days. Like most men of his time, when he returned he left much of that behind. He rarely ever spoke of the war unless directly asked, and even then it was short and small responses. Upon return he went to college, was an engineering major, and he became an architect.
He was married, and had a daughter. And then lost his wife and raised his daughter as a widower. He lived a few doors down from my grandmother, who was also a widow. A mutual friend connected them. Strange to think you can live so close to someone with a similar story and not know them. They dated and found not only love for each other, but love of living life and experiencing things together. They married, blending their families together.
I never questioned the love from my grandfather. Never thought of him as anything other than my grandfather. I remember when I started to understand that my grandpa wasn’t my mom’s biological father. I remember watching the relationship he had with my younger uncles, and the relationship with my older uncles. And the smiles he had when he saw his great-grandchildren.
We recently visited him. My grandparents live about 400 miles from us, so it is not just a drop in visit while out and about. My daughter was doing a family tree project and had given him a branch in her presentation. We had questions to ask to fill in what we didn’t know. I explained what she was doing and that she needed to fill in the stuff I didn’t know. He looked at me a bit longer than I thought he would and then turned to my daughter and said “Okay,, what do you need to ask.” Her questions were not typical family tree questions. She asked about where he went to school when he was her age, and what his first job was, and what he majored in college. They were life questions. I am glad we got a chance to have that moment with him. I could tell these were not the questions he expected, they were questions to truly get to know more about the individual themself.
