For many of us, grandparents are very important people in our lives. If we’re lucky, they’re there when we’re growing up and can have a strong and positive influence in our lives.
I was fortunate to have my mother’s parents in my life almost constantly while growing up. Mom was a struggling single parent with four kids and the five of us lived with our grandparents until I was in the fifth grade.
Although grampa was still working when I was growing up, because we lived in the same home, he was my only real father figure.
As most people have with their father, I have many fond memories of time with my grandfather. I remember the first time he took me fishing; it was at a trout farm, and I was so proud of the little fish I brought home!
The first memory I have of getting a haircut at a barber shop was with grampa; even though the barbers there all knew him, they thought we were father and son thanks to delayed graying of his hair (thanks for those genes, grampa!)
I have a memory of helping mom and grampa overhaul the engine in mom’s car. I couldn’t have been more than seven at the time, but I was right in there helping and getting dirty.
I think that was the first time I learned about tightening valve cover bolts in a specific sequence with a torque wrench. I guess I learned my “do-it-yourself” attitude from him.
I only remember getting spanked by grampa one time (I was more likely to get a whooping from mom or gramma; they were also do-it-yourself women and didn’t wait until grampa got home.)
It was during the summer between fourth and fifth grade; I had been out all day with my best friend at the time, not an unusual event for a nice summer day, except that I came home way past dark, so everyone was frantic worrying about me.
This was in the days before Amber Alerts and “stranger danger” and I often would be out all day when the weather was nice, which wasn’t all that often in our Seattle suburb of Kirkland.
There were only a few rules and one of them was to be home in time for dinner, and certainly before dark.
I remember grampa telling me, before taking me over his knee, that this would hurt him more than it would me. Even at that age, I knew he meant it because my grandfather was a man of few words, and he didn’t say things he didn’t mean.
Throughout my early childhood and into my teens, my grandparents, mom and all my aunts, uncles and cousins would go camping at least once every summer.
Our “tribe” would take over two or three camping spots and it would be like one big family reunion in the woods, complete with hiking, fishing and various games.
My grandfather, Everett Sheppard Kendrick, was born August 20, 1912, in Hillyard, Washington (now a part of Spokane).
The second of three children of Joseph Edward Kendrick and Edith Clara Sheppard, his grandparents had brought their families to eastern Washington from Illinois (Kendrick) and Minnesota (Sheppard) in the early 1890’s to take advantage of the Homestead Act after Washington became a state in 1889.
Descended primarily from hardy Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English immigrant farming stock, grampa’s family farmed from their home just outside of Reardan, Washington, a small town just west of Spokane.
Like many kids, I remember hearing about grampa having to walk a mile to school in the driving snow (uphill both ways), but after a visit to Reardan in the 1990s, grampa had to finally admit it was uphill only one way!
Grampa has lived through a lot during his lifetime; he survived the 1918 flu pandemic which took one of his uncles or cousins along with an estimated 50 million others all over the world.
As a teenager, he was blinded in his right eye because he was playing with blasting caps when one went off and caused a sliver to lodge in his eye. (This kept him from being drafted into the military during the war.)
For those wondering, back then you could buy dynamite at the local hardware store when you needed to blow up some stumps, and of course you needed blasting caps to set off the dynamite.
Grampa lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s and became one of the millions of young men who worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal program instituted during the FDR administration.
Sign typically placed at a WPA project
An inefficient government make-work program, nevertheless, the CCC gave many young men a way to earn a living for their family and keep them off the streets and out of gangs. Grampa always spoke fondly of his three years with the CCC.
The CCC eventually became the Works Progress Administration (WPA) or as he recently shared with us; their name for it at the time was “We Putter Around”.
In August 1937, a few months after leaving the CCC, he married Eva Ruth Manning, the love of his life. They were together for 58 years until we lost her to cancer in 1995.
In 1949, when my mother was about ten years old, grampa contracted Tuberculosis (TB), an oftentimes fatal disease at the time. Because of the infectious nature of TB (it’s transmitted through the air via coughing) he was confined to a sanatorium where many of his fellow TB sufferers died of the disease.
After surviving TB grampa had an opportunity to attend a trade school where he learned land surveying and eventually got a job surveying for the Washington Fisheries Department and then the Washington Department of Transportation where he worked on the new Interstate Highway System, primarily I-5 in Washington before retiring in the mid-1970s.
A devout Christian, grampa has been an elder in his church since the 1960s and was loved by all who came to know him.
Grampa & gramma in 1992 for their 55th wedding anniversary with my aunt Janice (seated next to grampa,) mom & aunt Donna
In his 80’s, grampa was diagnosed with diabetes but that didn’t slow him down either. With farming in his blood, I’ve never known my grandfather to not have a garden; I think he was working in his garden the day before he was taken to the hospital.
He told the family several years ago that it was his goal to live at least as long as his father who had died just four weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
On August 20, 2010, grampa had his 98th birthday. Since he and my mother moved to Burkesville, Kentucky in the late 1990s, I drove the 900+ miles from Minneapolis and arrived in time to wish him a happy 98th birthday.
It was touch and go for a while, but he really started to perk up the weekend I was there. I know he was glad that I was there, as was I; I hadn’t seen him in a few years, and it was weighing heavy on my mind.
There were also a lot of friends from his church who stopped by from time to time and he carried on as if he was sitting in his own living room, not a day over 90!
By the time I headed back to Minnesota, I half expected (and hoped for) him to be headed back home within a few days; but it was not to be. We lost grampa on September 1st.
Grampa maintained full control of his mental capacities until the last few hours of his life. Surrounded by friends and family to the end, this is the way I think I would prefer to go when it’s my time.
Although the loss is painful, I’m comforted knowing that he’s with gramma now and is no longer suffering. When I got the phone call that I was dreading, I took a few minutes to say a prayer for him and to thank God for allowing me to be able to travel to see him before the end.
I have written this tribute to my grandfather from my perspective, but I know my sisters and my cousins must all have their own version of this story because grampa didn’t play favorites. We were all close to him because he was close to all of us.
My wish is to be a good grandfather to my grandchildren, the way my grandfather was for me. Oh, and it’s my goal to live to be at least 98, just like my grandfather; my hero.
That’s a wonderful tribute. I only hope that I can be as good a grandparent when Chani & Clay’s baby is finally here. Grandpa has set a pretty high “bar” for us all to aspire to reach.
Oh my goodness you have nailed it so well. I dont think that I could have said it any better. I think that I have also tried to raise my family the way that I saw our grandfather raise his family. I saw the love that he shared with grandmother all those years and have tried to have the same love and admiration for my husband. I too remember the camping trips, and the fishing trips, I think the first fish that I caught was on the Toutle River on Mt. Saint Helens many years ago, I think that I must have been 6 or 7 but I do remember it. I remember the trips to the mountians for firewood, and huckleberries, and blueberries. I cherished the trips to the pass when the snow would come and he would take all of us to play in the snow all day. And the many waterfalls. I have to say I have been thinking of something to say at the service, but I think that I going to read yours as you have pretty much summed it up. I may have to add something, because every time that I have thought about writing something to say at the service, one song keeps popping into my head, “Grandpa tell me bout the good ol’ days”. The many times that I sat with him and listened to the good ol’ days I would just soak up and I shared them with my children, hoping that they might be listening. I have learned many things from grandpa, I can only hope that I to live as long and be able to share those memories with my grandchildren. Also one thing that I recall, because I did something when I was a little girl, Grandpa got a new chair to relax in after a long day at work and I wanted to sit in it and he would not let me because I was still in diapers, but being potty trained, I was mad the my brother got to sit in grandpa’s chair, and I could not, so when no one was looking I craweld into the chair and pee’d, when I was discoverd sitting in his chair and had pee’d, I got the biggest wooping from him with a willow switch. Like you said grandpa never spanked us if we did not deserve it and I really deserved it for that. Grandpa I will miss the talks, I will miss seeing you in your garden, But I know that you are with grandma now, you and she are re-united and telling her that we are all doing fine. Oh and dont forget to catch that big fish as well. I love you with all my heart and will miss you.
One day when I had stopped by after work to visit him in the hospital, I had walked in his room, and he was resting. I went to the nurses station and told his nurse to let him know that I had come by, and would be back later that evening because I figured he needed his rest. She said no you wont we are going in there to wake him up and talk to him. Shelia, I believe was her name. She marched right into room 304, where he was resting and woke him up!! At first I found this to be quite rude however she had told me something very valuable that day, you never let someone who is 98 just rest, they will always have another story to tell. Sure enough it was in fact true. That day I learned what few grandchildren get to hear from their grandparents, how they met their spouse. In Grandpas case he met Grandma through one of his friends who was also trying to “court” her at the same time!! However you obviously know who won her heart. He was a very good spirited man and I can only hope that he is in his paradise racing cars with grandma(and not getting speeding tickets!!) He had a very great, and long life.
A truly insperational awsome grandfather and father I have so many memmories but its very hard for me to write so I’ll leave it at that His Raspberry have gone wild in our back yard, One memmorie I remember is camping trip all were there Mike and I were told not to play on the log jam in the river and of course we did Mike made it across I fell through and grandpa pull me out of the river and log jam we made it back to the camp site where I was about to get punished when A. Donna showed up with Rick,her boys and Rob Kendrick they had all gotton stung several times grandpa said cover them in mud and let them lye in the sun untill it drys, I didnt get punished but I dont go near Log jams any more
I remember that trip too, but not the part about your logjam experience. We had been told to stay away from this huge tree stump because there was a bees nest in it. Well, we didn’t listen and all got stung! I did think Mike was with me tho, because we were always getting into trouble together.