Charles K. Will, my gramps, was born in 1923. My Mom put together a DVD slide show of his life that basically served one initial purpose; to choke my heart like Tyson on a first date. But after I got over the initial shock of emotions I started to look deeper into the images. First off, a lot has changed in people in general. My sister and I sat down the other night and read some of the letters he wrote to his friends. World War II was raging on and America had just gotten involved. All his friends were either in Europe fighting or at one of the military camps waiting to be sent off. A motorcycle accident had sealed my grandfather's fate. No, he wasn't riding it...as family luck would have it, a motorcycle struck him as he was riding a bike causing severe damage to his knee. This, in turn, ruined his chances for the draft. So while all his friends were in their olive drab uniforms, my gramps, in a bitter-sweet turn of humor signed all his letters to his friends "Charlie 4F." (4F was the designator for folks that were ineligible for the draft).
This got me to thinking about how people today are so different from the folks of his era. It made me realize what a different breed my generation is to his. Nowadays, kids would jump up and cheer and go buy a hooker if they found out they were ineligible for the draft. But my grandfather was completely heartbroken that he couldn't go. Maybe its just a matter of folks taking their freedom for granted or maybe its just plain old self-centeredness, but either way my grandfather and his pals were willing to put themselves in harms way for the cost of freedom. That was something that I'd never known about him...something I'd wish I'd known before he passed away.
I could sit here and type about how great of a guy he was or go into detail how much of a public figure he was in my home town but that's irrelevant. I could mention his love for making folks laugh or how he would sit up all night with his friends playing cards. But that doesn't matter. As I stood at the funeral (with the DVD movie streaming on repeat) it hit home to me. My grandfather was a good man for two reasons. He loved his family and he had respect for people. Those are the two building blocks. Those two things are the foundation. He had a great foundation and he built a wonderful family on top of it and I'm lucky to have been a part of it.
So I'm just going to say thanks, gramps. Thank you for the foundation you built. We'll do our best to keep it sturdy. I hope that the card games up there are long and loud and that you come out smelling like cheap perfume.
Side note: My grandmother told me that everyone who went with my grandfather on the day he got rejected from the draft got sent to France. None of them came home.
posted by Michael Witmer @ Tuesday, March 30, 2004
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home