My Grandpa

This blogpost turned out to be quite the challenge for me, simply because my background is so varied. In truth, I’m sort of a mutt. A combination of various ethnicities namely German, Polish, Native American, and some west African country. This made it hard to choose a specific legend, event, or family member to base this blogpost on, but in the end I chose my grandfather who happens to give me my African-American and Native-American heritage.

My grandfather is a very unique, and ambitious man, who has great stories to prove his character. I’ll start with his humble beginnings. He was the grandchild of former slaves, and was born fairly poor. Although he was poor throughout his childhood, he exhibited a high intellect, and was rewarded by college admission. Though as the tale grows sweeter, it also grows more intense. During his undergraduate education, my grandfather lived in a colored dormitory, due to the segregation that was prominent in this era. My grandfather attended college during the expansion of the civil rights movement, and as a result, tensions were high between blacks and whites. One heated day, for reasons unknown to myself, a crew of police officers equipped with K9 units ended up surrounding his dorm, and ultimately unleashed the K9’s unto my grandfather and the other African-Americans inhabiting this dormitory. My grandfather received a nasty bite from one of the dogs leaving short term, but very prominent damage. The inhabitants of the dormitory decided to sue the police officers, and the case was eventually taken up by Thurgood Marshall himself. The dorm inhabitants won the case, and my grandfather ended up graduating college with honors.

Later in my grandfathers life, he joined the marines. He was an avid hunter and outdoorsman and loved the camaraderie that came with joining the army. He received valuable snipers training, and his present day deadeye shot is pure testament to this. My knowledge of my grandfathers time in the marines is cloudy, but what do I do know, is that some of the skills he learned during this time have stayed with him his whole life. He is still an avid hunter and goes a couple of times every year.

After leaving the marines, my grandfather joined the Freemasons, and also entered medical school. By this time my grandfather had a couple kids of his own, my father included, and had to take his youngest son (my uncle) with him to medical school lectures, while his other children were at school. He did this throughout his whole medical education. As for the Freemasons, my grandfather went on to obtain the highest title offered to masons, but tells me I’d have to join if I want him to describe any specifics.

To end my grandfathers legend, I will detail an event that happened to him during medical school, a time where he was married with kids. One day, my grandfather left his home, telling my grandmother he was going to class. My grandmother had grown suspicious of my grandfather and feared he was cheating. She followed him that day to see where he was going. As my grandfather arrived at his destination, my grandmother, watching from afar, concluded that he was not going to class, and was in fact cheating with another woman. She watched him enter the building with the other woman as she grabbed a loaded pistol from the glove compartment. She followed my grandfather into the building and found the room that he was in (how she knew this I am not sure) and found him engaging in sexual acts with the other woman. My grandmother raised the pistol at the couple as my grandfather met her gaze. There were tears in her eyes and they held each others stare in a tense stair down. With lightning swift reactions, my grandfather grabbed for the pistol, simultaneously emptying the ammo clip from the guns shaft and wedging his finger between the hammer to prevent any shots from being fired. It seems his marine skills paid off in the end, just not how you’d expect them to.