Grandpa Ward at his 95th Birhtday Party (February 6, 1999)
Ten years ago yesterday my Grandpa died. (click here to see webpage tribute I did at the time) He was my last living Grandparent. As a child I was blessed to be able to share a great amount of time with him. This was back in the day when most children shared time with elders rather than simply being shuffled from one programmed activity to the next.
During my childhood I was fortunate to have 4 elders who shared great wisdom & good times with me. I now realize how much the 4 of them are influential in who I am & almost everything I love about myself! They all showed me unconditional love & accepted me for exactly who I was. My Grandma Lewis was my refuge. She lived around the corner & I would often escape to her home when I needed to. We played cards & she told stories. She encouraged my science education by regularly taking me to the local planetarium & science center and giving me books about science and nature. She was always happy & upbeat. My Grandma Ward was also an amazing story teller. I always looked forward staying over at their house & hearing the bedtime stories she would tell about her childhood growing up in Oakland on Lake Apopka. It is amazing to have that very personal connection to a time when life was so different in Florida (she was born in the 1890s). She was loving, hard working, organized, a great cook, encouraging of achievement, and dedicated to family above all else.
Annie Smith was also a powerful influence in my life. She was a housekeeper for my family from the time I was 11 months old until I was in my mid 30s. She was a Black Woman who grew up working on a farm in Georgia. She had minimal formal education, but had wisdom far beyond any PhD I have ever met. She was there everyday when I came home from school & often cared for us when my parents were on vacation. She loved us like we were her own grands. Later when I moved back home after graduated college with little plan in life I really got to know her as an adult. I was going through all my radical thoughts about how to change the world & felt no idea was worth anything if it did not make sense to Annie. She patiently listened to all my ideas from reading leftist political thought & really helped me filter through to what made sense. I would often come in her house to visit with her family when I gave her a ride home from work. She lived very simply in a rented house in the poor side of Winter Park, FL (sadly now completely gentrified). On her limited income she helped support her children & grands. She was also a woman of strong faith & never allowed any hardship (she experienced quite a bit in her life) shake her faith, good spirit or love. I am so grateful for having the gift of wisdom from and such a personal relationship with someone from such different social and economic circumstances. I credit her with my passion for and empathy skills as a social worker. By her life & actions she showed me how much love & power there was beyond the material world I was being indoctrinated into.
Grandpa Ward was perhaps the most influential male figure in my childhood. My dad was there too and working hard to support our family. To do this, he had to sacrifice much of his time, coming home late from work every day, going to meetings at night & engaging in all the different social events that were necessary for success in his career, so he could provide for his family. I think this is the way roles have often traditionally been in families. Parents busy working hard & grandparents doing much of the child rearing. I think this is a good model as grandparents have so much wisdom to share. Since Grandpa was semi-retired the time I did get to spend with him he was very available to me. He was such a great guy for a boy to share time with. He was an electrical engineer & had a whole workshop full of old tube electronics (loved to play with the oscilloscope!). But he always loved the latest technology too. I remember the solid state Heathkit TVs & Stereos I got to help him build. When computers came out in the late 70s he was an early adapter. As treasurer at church, he quickly transferred finances to the computer long before most business even thought about such things. He also was outside all the time, taking care of his yard & in his work looking after the orange groves owned by the Lake Charm Fruit Company. Horseshoes was also a favorite outside activity at their Winter Park home.
Ward Family Cabin, Swannanoa Mountans, NC
Perhaps I will always most associate him with the mountain cabin and the times I got to stay there with them. While he continued to work with the Lake Charm Fruit Company into his 70s, he was able to get away for the summer, as this was not the active season in the fruit business. So he and Grandma would go up to the family cabin (built by his dad in the 1920s) in May and stay through September every year when I was a child. He would plant a vegetable garden every year and being an old cabin, there was constantly work to be done repairing things & he did it all (I got to help). He did all the plumbing (a mountain spring for water source!). He rewired the entire house (before my time up there). I remember one year the cabin was vandalize & we had to repair many screens and broken glass. Back then there were real hardware stores & I remember going down to what I think was the Biltmore Hardware store & getting all the moldings, having new glass custom cut, buying screen and getting all the other necessary parts & caulking to repair it all. The Grandpa & the old black man who worked there were like best buds as they worked out what we needed (perhaps my best shopping experience ever). Those vandals actually provided for a really meaningful learning experience for me & we promptly had the cabin back in shape. We also spent a lot of time working in the vegetable garden & keeping up the yard (mowing was often one of my main duties). All the while Grandma would be hard at work cooking & keeping the house clean. This was no easy chore as no modern conveniences were at the cabin other than hot water. She kept the place organized immaculate (hard to believe if you see the dusty, mousey current condition). I still find little notes she wrote indicating a missing puzzle piece or missing card in a deck of cards (clearly she was from a time when things were not wasted). She also was often working with vegetables or fruit from the land (she made amazing apple sauce & prepared enough to last well into the winter back in Florida).
Grandpa on the top of Mount Mitchell
Grandpa loved to take me hiking on the mountain property (120 acres). It followed Jim’s Branch on one border & went up to a ridge line. We pretty much blazed trails every time we went up. Sometimes following abandoned logging roads, but often just going through the woods. Always on the lookout for rattlesnakes (though they were mostly around the cabin). We also went on picnics & hikes in the Pisgah Forest. He was quite the hiker & I think he was in his 80s last time we did the 3.5 mile, 2000 foot elevation climb to the top of Looking Glass Rock. I owe my love of nature and inspiration to get my MS in Biology (Wetland Ecology) to him.
He was a kind and patient man. I never remember him saying anything bad about anyone. He loved his family & did everything he could for us. He was the oldest sibling and patriarch of the Ward family. He worked hard his whole life and got much meaning from this. He was self disciplined and never drank alcohol (a couple times in his 80s & 90s he would have a glass of wine at a celebration). I never remembering him telling me what to do and he did not have to, he showed me! All of those experiences are a deep part of me. I was so fortunate to be able to be so close to my Grandpa.
My sister Cathy’s eulogy best describes who my Grandpa was to us (click for link).
When I got news of his death 10 years ago, I was already going through a really hard time. I was actually up at the cabin with some friends trying to get past the fact that my wife was separating from me and was currently moving her stuff out of our house. Already being in loss mode, it took a while to fully take in the fact that he was not physically in my life any more. I knew his health had been declining and was fortunate to get chances to visit with him often before his death. But it was still a shock, as he was always so strong. I miss him and I know he is a part of me!
I now realize just how much wisdom I gained from these experiences with my elders (I have also been fortunate to have many other caring mentors in my life). They came from a time when life was lived fully. A time when people were more authentic and suffering was part of life. Elders were actively part of family, not retired to some distant golf course community. In my social work I get to work with a lot of families that society would label as having limited resources. However, I am constantly amazed at the multi-generational family support. While it is criminal that society often does not provide basic health care for these hard working people, the family support many have offers their greatest resource. I too have been blessed with a loving and supportive family. Even in this disconnected world, I know I can always pick up the phone & call a sister, parent or aunt for support. They were all there for me when I went through divorce! They helped me turn this time of loss into a time of growth. They nurtured my soul and helped support me in following my heart (at the time led to me leaving my wetland biologist job to get a Masters in Social Work). My family continues to support me & provide unconditional love as I continue my path of growth & continual re-creation. They have helped me learn to enjoy the growth process and let go of the focus on goals. I can now be present to my life and be my authentic self. That is the Meaning of Life! (Monty Python’s fish come to attention:-)
