PacStandardTW on Nostr: If he were still with us, my grandfather would have turned 99 today. He was a WW2 ...
If he were still with us, my grandfather would have turned 99 today. He was a WW2 veteran who served in Italy, having rushed to enlist like most young men of his generation immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
After the war he became a draftsman for McDonnell Douglas and later ventured into small business entrepreneurship, first having purchased a taxi service for a small tourist town in California where he and his brothers assembled a fleet of modified VW Bugs into open air buggies that looked a lot like Flintstones-mobiles. And later he went back to his roots as an industrial artist and opened a print shop to service the town's publishing needs.
He's been gone half my life already, but I still have many strong memories of his presence and a deep sense impression of my childhood in his company. I remember sitting in his shop on hot summer's days, him fiddling with this or that and whistling along with the 1940s jazz on the AM radio, the printing press whirring rhythmically in the background, the strong scent of ink and toner lingering in the air. I remember studying the press and its peculiar machinery, a vacuum suction pulling each sheet of paper one-by-one into the conveyor, pulled up and spun into the drum and then magically appearing on the other side with a fresh face of text and image.
In retrospect, I think it was this awe and curiosity, a kind of background hypnosis slowly impressing upon my imagination a fascination not only with the interesting technology itself, but the purpose it served in the production of its goods: Grandpa was an information manufacturer and distributor. I didn't realize it then but I am relatively certain now that my own intellectual and professional pursuits of rhetorical theory and public discourse come from that early introduction to the intrinsic value of language, watching my grandfather make a living pushing words into the world.
Like most any of us do, at pivotal decision points in my life I wrapped myself in the formative folds of my experiences—in ways more formative than I could have imagined, my grandpa's model as a great war veteran who fought for ideals of freedom—and who made a career putting speech into the world—made an impression on my sense of who I was, where I came from, and who I was supposed to be.
He had married the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants. Great grandma was a nurse, great grandpa enjoyed the drink. But as Irish Catholics they were enthralled with the Kennedy family and by all counts great grandma thought JFK may as well have been Jesus Christ himself. My grandfather being an artist and a good son-in-law set down to draw a portrait of JFK as a gift to her. By the time us kids came around, this sketch was hung on the wall of my grandparents home and while it was not quite on the level of a professional masterpiece, we sure didn't know that and as far as we were concerned, it was a sacred symbol for our grandfather's creative command and his love of his family. As a result, we grew up knowing who JFK was even before we knew Big Bird and Mr. Rogers. But also as I got older and developed a political imagination, I realized that this portrait meant something more to my grandfather, that it spoke about a deeper sense of morality and political ideals. Maybe it was also a way for a middle aged father to make sense of a horrific tragedy, to offer some semblance of healing and humanity to his family and himself in a time of American life when such a traumatic national event was still a singular horror. But I believe now that my grandfather put this image in the world for a reason, to anchor our hearts to what JFK "meant", a kind of moral north star for them—and as I believe they hoped and intended, for us—to remember him and what he stood for and that his being taken from us should not be forgotten.
So today I remember all these things, but mostly I remember my grandfather and what his legacy means for me and my family, and on his birthday I thank God for his love and the opportunity he gave us all to be here.
Happy birthday, Gramps. ♥️
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Published at
2023-05-25 04:44:37Event JSON
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"content": "\nIf he were still with us, my grandfather would have turned 99 today. He was a WW2 veteran who served in Italy, having rushed to enlist like most young men of his generation immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. \n\nAfter the war he became a draftsman for McDonnell Douglas and later ventured into small business entrepreneurship, first having purchased a taxi service for a small tourist town in California where he and his brothers assembled a fleet of modified VW Bugs into open air buggies that looked a lot like Flintstones-mobiles. And later he went back to his roots as an industrial artist and opened a print shop to service the town's publishing needs. \n\nHe's been gone half my life already, but I still have many strong memories of his presence and a deep sense impression of my childhood in his company. I remember sitting in his shop on hot summer's days, him fiddling with this or that and whistling along with the 1940s jazz on the AM radio, the printing press whirring rhythmically in the background, the strong scent of ink and toner lingering in the air. I remember studying the press and its peculiar machinery, a vacuum suction pulling each sheet of paper one-by-one into the conveyor, pulled up and spun into the drum and then magically appearing on the other side with a fresh face of text and image. \n\nIn retrospect, I think it was this awe and curiosity, a kind of background hypnosis slowly impressing upon my imagination a fascination not only with the interesting technology itself, but the purpose it served in the production of its goods: Grandpa was an information manufacturer and distributor. I didn't realize it then but I am relatively certain now that my own intellectual and professional pursuits of rhetorical theory and public discourse come from that early introduction to the intrinsic value of language, watching my grandfather make a living pushing words into the world.\n\nLike most any of us do, at pivotal decision points in my life I wrapped myself in the formative folds of my experiences—in ways more formative than I could have imagined, my grandpa's model as a great war veteran who fought for ideals of freedom—and who made a career putting speech into the world—made an impression on my sense of who I was, where I came from, and who I was supposed to be.\n\nHe had married the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants. Great grandma was a nurse, great grandpa enjoyed the drink. But as Irish Catholics they were enthralled with the Kennedy family and by all counts great grandma thought JFK may as well have been Jesus Christ himself. My grandfather being an artist and a good son-in-law set down to draw a portrait of JFK as a gift to her. By the time us kids came around, this sketch was hung on the wall of my grandparents home and while it was not quite on the level of a professional masterpiece, we sure didn't know that and as far as we were concerned, it was a sacred symbol for our grandfather's creative command and his love of his family. As a result, we grew up knowing who JFK was even before we knew Big Bird and Mr. Rogers. But also as I got older and developed a political imagination, I realized that this portrait meant something more to my grandfather, that it spoke about a deeper sense of morality and political ideals. Maybe it was also a way for a middle aged father to make sense of a horrific tragedy, to offer some semblance of healing and humanity to his family and himself in a time of American life when such a traumatic national event was still a singular horror. But I believe now that my grandfather put this image in the world for a reason, to anchor our hearts to what JFK \"meant\", a kind of moral north star for them—and as I believe they hoped and intended, for us—to remember him and what he stood for and that his being taken from us should not be forgotten.\n\nSo today I remember all these things, but mostly I remember my grandfather and what his legacy means for me and my family, and on his birthday I thank God for his love and the opportunity he gave us all to be here. \n\nHappy birthday, Gramps. ♥️\n\n\nnostr:nevent1qqsrp54ksgeq3yuqng8rqydtt5wkpczk86u8w7nlchpkefdk7kqwd5szyzhgux4eckt6h0pld8tmtw79pkj7chprkpugx4fl2ga0lgkuhd9nzqcyqqqqg2gqxcxp9",
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