For Grandpa

The world lost a great man on Thursday, August 28th. My grandfather passed away from pneumonia just shy of his 90th birthday. He requested that we hold no funeral or other formal service or post an obituary and we honor that wish, but the passing of such an honorable man should not go completely unrecognized.

Grandpa led a remarkable life. The last surviving sibling of eight, he enlisted in the Army during the Great Depression at the age of seventeen, having a neighbor sign an affidavit falsifying his age as eighteen. He was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. Many of his military friends lost their lives in the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and Grandpa found himself in more than one hair-raising situation at several points throughout his military career. He rose to the rank of Master Sergeant, the highest an enlisted man can hold, through sheer determination and an unwillingness to accept excuses from anyone, including and especially himself. He learned French at the Army Language School in the Presidio and lived with his family in Berlin before the Wall was built. He also served as an escort to bring deceased men home to their families.

It wasn’t Grandpa’s military record that earned him the title of “great”, though, at least not for us, his family. Sure, men who leave behind their families to travel overseas and fight for the individual rights we enjoy each and every day earn the title, and rightly so; but great men can be more than that. The adjective “great” gets bandied about freely in our culture, often finding itself applied to politicians who cheat on their wives, thieving CEOs and other powerful men in the public spotlight whose private conduct, when it comes to light, proves them otherwise. Truly great men inspire others to be better people themselves. Anyone who’s met my father knows that he is someone to depend on during trying times and a man who will not rest until there is nothing left for him to do. He was right by Grandpa’s side during the last days of his life, up until and beyond his last breath.

There need not be elaborate, opulent funerals or events of state to symbolize our mourning for truly great men. Instead, we should honor their sacrifice and dedication to higher ideals not by attending a public event for a couple of hours and then returning to a status-quo life, but by holding ourselves to the same standards to which these men held themselves and we should celebrate their lives by letting who they were become a part of who we are every day. We were fortunate to have Grandpa with us in good health for as long as we did. We loved him, appreciated him, respected him, and learned from him. We’ll honor his wish to do without a funeral without disappointment or a heavy heart because we will also honor him, perpetuating his great legacy by embracing the lessons of greatness we learned from him—and that will keep him with us always.