Of the many things to be said about my grandfather, who was just a few months shy of the three-digit birthday when he passed last Friday, the best I can say is that he was among the sunniest, friendliest, most industrious men I've ever known. And that I got at least half of my fashion sense from him.
Seriously, he was a great man, and not least because, in the midst of the rampant white flight from Gary, Indiana, that began in the 1950s, he and his wife Theresa remained lifelong members of St. John's Lutheran on 10th Ave., where both they and my parents were married. By the time they opted to move to a nursing home some years ago, Harold and Theresa were the only remaining white congregants, and proudly and happily so. As a child of lily-white Arizona, the first state to rescind the national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I have always been deeply impressed by my Christian grandfather's matter-of-fact, and altogether too rare, living out of Paul's injunction to the Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." On that, and on so many other counts, Grandpa can rest in God's peace.
I knew your grandfather as a kid because I went to St. Johns and even up through this past year of college we had written to each other occasionally. He was a very good man.
ReplyDeleteI saw that you commented on my livejournal. If you'd like to get ahold of me my aim sn is OtterPopsAreLove and my email is RBrandt87@gmail.com.
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to contact me.