REMEMBERING ONE WHO SERVED

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about my grandfather.

My grandfather was in the Philippines near the end of World War II, presumably with General MacArthur.  He was a chaplain in the army.  

I asked him once what he thought about the atom bomb being dropped on Japan.  He said that he and other soldiers feared that Hitler possessed a secret weapon.  They all rejoiced to learn that ours was the world leader who possessed it.

He was a yellow dog Democrat, presumably because of FDR.  He married a Republican.  He told me once that I needed to get another job every time a Republican gets elected president.  

He was born in Alabama.  He was raised to be a fundamentalist and a segregationist, but life changed him on both counts.  Near the end of his life he admitted at a family reunion that he no longer believed Jesus would return during his lifetime.  

Sometime during the 1970s, he stopped using the N-word, and all of its variations, to describe black people, and not long after that he stopped using the world “colored.”  He would not have been happy if any of his family had married a person of another race, but I believe he would have accepted it.

He was not a great preacher nor was he a deep thinker.  In his personal library he owned no great books except a volume of Whitman's poetry.  He kept a set of the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible tucked away on a bottom shelf in his office.  When I began reading it, I saw no evidence that he had ever opened it.  Maybe he had, but he would not have liked what he read.

Like most of us, my grandfather was obscure and ambivalent throughout his life.  A lot of people loved him, but few in his family sought him out for company.

I spent a lot more time with him than most.  I tend to be amiable and to find something amiable in everyone.  He was grumpy, cantankerous, stubborn, narrow minded, yet I loved him when he could be happy.

He was a mystery to me, but I remember him at this time every year because he served during a bloody time in world history.

Blessings...