There are memories we hold close to our heart; we experience such joy at an innocent age before our minds are tainted by society and we file away the thoughts. We hold these sacred memories and revisit them as we age with increasing frequency. My story is born of an age of innocence many years ago.
Some of my earliest memories date back to the 1960s when I was young and impressionable. I spent many days with my grandfather during this period and was fortunate that he was passionate about history and I enjoyed listening. My young mind absorbed each and every word while my very active imagination allowed me to travel through time beside him. He spoke of his time growing up before immigrating to the United States in the early 1900s and about the love he held for his own parents as well as the sanctity of childhood. His stories were varied and numerous but they were always sure to thrill this young boy as we sat together under that summer sun back in 1966.
Grampa would visit Concord each summer and spend some time at our home. He enjoyed gardening, taking walks and his wonderful life. At the age of 90, he experienced so much and compressed his history into his summer visits. As we visited the stories would flow and sometimes tears too. His stories brought him back to another time when he was a child, born in 1876 he lived life much as it was written in a history book. He spoke of the time he spent in the trenches fighting during the Great War, his very first automobile manufactured by Henry Ford and the Great Depression. He knew the value of a good job and a meal.
Though he experienced the stories he told, there were memories of stories his father told him before he immigrated. Grampa’s father was born in 1846 and these pieces of history passed down to me are very dear, for his story and his fathers’ story are also my story. I consider it both an opportunity and an honor to carry the many stories I have heard in my life to the next generation.
His life was indeed long and his history vast. I learned that life is precious and fleeting. You are a young boy only once and live a life based upon good values, hard work, honesty and most importantly compassion for others.
It was through his stories and my imagination that I held Grampa’s hand as we journeyed through time each summer, visiting far away places and watching America grow into a beautiful nation.
Through him, I visited Yankee Stadium as it was being built in 1922, and then stopped at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., just in time to see the dedication to this great man. I was seated beside Grampa in a theater as we watched the very first motion picture with sound in 1923.
I heard the very first radio broadcast from the Grand Ole Opry in 1925 and stood on the airstrip with Grampa as Charles Lindbergh departed on his famous flight across the Atlantic. Al Jolson sang to me in 1927 and I watched a wonderful young lady named Amelia Earhart become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
When Grampa passed away there were many old friends at his funeral. I was dressed in my dark blue suit and seated with my parents. I was deeply saddened but did not cry. Each night following the funeral and for many years later I dreamed. I dreamed about traveling along a dusty old road towards the setting sun in a 1920 Ford motor car. I still traveled with Grampa in my dreams, but only during the happy times. Sitting together under the summer sunshine I travel through time again and again with this great man.
