Sunday, February 19, 2012

A life to hang your hat on

This morning around 930am my grandfather passed away. Words cannot describe what he meant to me, even some of my closest family members probably don't know how close we were, and as I type this post, there are tears running down my face, and I'm not going to try to hide it as I write this.

I had a history professor in college who made us read the NY Times obituaries everyday for a week and do a report on that. At the end of the week, he started the next lecture by reading the eulogy that he gave for his own father and it began with "my father's obituary won't be in the NY Times, but for the people that knew him and anyones life he touched, it was worthy of it, so I'm going to read to you what should have been in the NY Times this morning..." With that in mind, here we go:

My mother's father lived a tremendous life. He went to Niagara University and was a graduate of the first ROTC class from that school. He became an officer in the US Army and was a proud veteran and married my grandmother in 1951. After his ROTC commitment was up, he left the service and became a career chemist. He and his wife had two daughters, who each married and had three children, a total of four grandsons and two granddaughters.

Some variation of that will probably be in the local paper in Lewiston, NY tomorrow. What isn't captured there is the true legacy he left behind...

When I was growing up, I always looked up to Grandpa Fulson as the toughest man I knew, a "man's man", the type of guy that generated respect and deserved it. Some of my most distinct memories of him were:
- I think I was 8 or 9 and he took me out deer hunting on a really cold day. He must have fed me a candy bar every 20 minutes that day and we were making a ton of noise. In hindsight, he had a better chance of winning the lotto than he did of shooting a deer that day. He had clearly made a choice that day to be a grandpa instead of hunting. Today, I still love hunting and a lot of it is because of him.
- The first time he saw me catch in a baseball game he told me, "you catch a great game, but you'd be smarter if you stuck with being a shortstop, that gear's the tools of ignorance." I could tell by the tone in his voice though, that he was really proud that I went the "tools of ignorance" route. He made the trip to Rochester for my senior day at RIT and that meant so much to me, more than I ever told him.
- Most importantly, when he met Nancy for the first time, he pulled me aside and said -"Well, she seems really smart, so I can't figure out why she's with you, but you better not be an idiot" - again, I knew he was really proud, and when I called him to tell him we were engaged, hearing the pride in his voice was one of the greatest moments of my life.

So much of me is from him, other than my terrible sense of humor, if I can be half the man he was, I think I'll be doing great.

My view of him has never changed, but my view of what toughness was changed as I got to know more about my Grandfather.

At first, I thought he was so great and tough because he was an army veteran and loved to hunt and fish and loved the Buffalo Sabres. While he still always loved all those things, I then saw what real toughness is and what it really means to be a man. When his wife of 55 years fell ill with Alzheimer's and ultimately forgot everything, he never complained, or asked why this was happening. He just had the attitude that "this is what I signed up for". He was being a loving husband to the very last second. He was truly the most courageous and compassionate person I've known.

So, while, his obituary won't be in the NY Times tomorrow, he led a life to hang his hat on and that's enough for me and everyone who knew Frank.

I'm positive that he'd be pissed off at me for making such a big deal about him. I'm pretty sure he'd just have anyone that reads this do the following - the next time you're in a bar, order a martini with olives, the next time you watch the sabres, make sure to shout extra loud at the TV when they're not back-checking with "toughness", and the next time you think of "the greatest generation, you think of remember his friends that didn't come back from Korea".

Here's to finding peace and solace. I love you Grandpa. And the Sabres won 6-2 today.

3 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear about your grandfather Marty. He sounded like a great man and i'm sure if he ran into my Grandpa Schneider in heaven they would have a ball sharing some drinks and talking hunting and fishing.

    I'll be sure to toast your grandfather this evening...

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  2. Marty,
    condolences to you and your family from the entire R.N.R Family. He helped make you the man your are today, and I know he would be proud.
    -Jason

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  3. Marty,

    So sorry to hear about your grandpa. This is an amazing post, and such a meaningful tribute. Clearly you hold so much of him with you - the best legacy he could have left. My sympathies to your family.

    Kate

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