There are so many stories I'd like to share, both Grandpa's stories that he shared with me and the stories he made with me. I'm sure I'll think of more later and be prolific in my writing about him, but that's why I made this page. :) The earliest story I have about his life is that he was the sole surviving child of his parents and as such was spoiled rotten. It's said that the reason he hated soup was because during the Great Depression, when everyone else was eating soup, Grandpa would protest, and his mom responded by giving him steak. Grandpa was always a connoisseur of the finer things. He liked his bread burnt and his steak raw. When I was younger I did not understand the affection for stinky cheese, as my cousins and I called it, but that's become an acquired taste. I still don't get the affection for beer, though. He knew something about everything. Even though he obviously did have his favorites food-wise, if you asked him what he wanted for dinner or if he'd like some of this or that, he'd say, "Me gustan todos." He never ate the last bite of anything in case someone else still wanted some. He would keep shaving off the tiniest bites of something in the refrigerator, but he would always leave something behind. For as long as I can remember, he shared classic stories with me. When I was growing up in California and he was in Colorado, he would send cassette tapes of himself reading stories like the Tortoise and the Hare to me and other Aesop's Fables. We went to Colorado to visit frequently, and he can to us in California, too. While we were visiting, he always took me on walks through the apple orchard, and we'd pick cat tails and pussy willows to bring home and display. When we lived in Colorado for a couple of years, I spent most of my time at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Applewood Place. We would play games with Grandma and Grandpa versus Mom and me. We played Bridge, Triominos, Life, Uno, and others I'm sure. Grandma and Grandpa had classical music on all the time. They had this unofficial competition for who could correctly name the piece on the radio first. Oh, that reminds me of an earlier story. Grandma and Grandpa both loved music. They were both in musical groups at Augustana. I think that's where they met. Well, when Grandpa went to play for the band there, the conductor asked what he played. Grandpa told him he played whatever they needed him to play, and that's how he ended up playing the Sousaphone. He also told me of growing up in Illinois and how hot and humid it was in the summer, that they would sit out on the lanai with all the windows open trying to catch a breeze. Grandpa delighted in a lot of simple things. He thought this African lullaby was funny because it was so wrong. Zim ba ba, mommy's baby, zim ba ba, mommy's baby, twist his neck and hit him in the head, throw him in the ditch and he'll be dead. He thought Oh how lovely cooks the meat was funny because of the second verse where she responds that she's burnt the meat. Then there was There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza, There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza, a hole. So fix it Dear Henry, Dear Henry, Dear Henry. So fix it, Dear Henry. Dear Henry fix it. When I was little, grandpa would have me sit in front on the cereal cabinet, and he'd make a wall of the cereal boxes around me for me to choose one. He made a production of it, and I loved it. I had a rock collection in about 6th grade. We would go for hikes places like Mt. Garfield, and I'd collect rocks. When we got home, he would pull out these little vials he had of chemicals and tell me about how when we put a drop on the rock, if it had a certain reaction it meant something about what the rock was. He loved nature. He loved photography. He loved science. He said when he worked for the Los Alamos National Laboratories that they were a bunch of biologists doing chemistry for a bunch of physicists. And they were mad scientists in the most classic sense. My favorite story he told me to illustrate this was how there was a time when they wanted to know what the effects of a radioactive element were on the body at freezing temperatures, so his friend/co-worker stripped down to his tidy whities and sat on a block of ice with all the doors and windows to his lab open, in the middle of winter in Los Alamos, and he taped the element to his skin. I love that when I was studying the history of computers as part of my graduate studies, I came across pictures that I recognized of the LANL because we had similar photos of our own from Grandpa's days there. Grandpa helped me make projects I loved for school. He didn't do it for me, but he guided me and really enabled my creativity. It was the geekiest stuff, like one year for my science fair project, he knew I loved math, so he suggested I turn factoring trees into art since math is science. I thought I wanted to be an architect in 7th grade, so he got me architecture models to put together of famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. He was always there for me. Always. He liked wood working and made some beautiful creations. He made these initial cubes for whoever he could. I guess my initials didn't lend themselves well to the design. He made beautiful displays for things like model ships of the ships my dad was on. He was so proud of his children and what they had accomplished in life. My dad had gotten these giant chess pieces once on deployment, with no table to play them on, so Grandpa made a table. I'm sitting under the mantle he made to go over mom's fire place years ago. In his later years, he made little plaques with designs of inlaid wood. When my son, Kevin, was born, Kevin was Grandpa's pride and joy. He took pictures of him all the time. He took him for a walk everyday. In the end, when Grandpa couldn't remember who he was, much less anyone else, it seemed like he still knew Kevin because he would light up to see Kevin and say, "Hi, big guy!" He also loved Gabriel and would light up with a smile any time he saw him. When the boys couldn't be there in person, he still delighted in looking through Kevin's baby album. Well, this is just the scratch of the surface of the things I loved about my grandfather. As you can see, I was so richly blessed to have had him as my grandfather. Thank you for sharing these memories with me.