What should my grandkids know about me?
May 31, 2016
We were sitting in the sun room of my son's home in St. Louis when he and my daughter-in-law gave me a special Father's Day present last year. It was a small book that asked me a long list of questions about myself from the time I was a small child to my life as a husband and a dad. The goal is to fill it out and then transfer the answers to a computer app to make a special book.
I've delayed filling out the book for the past year. It got tucked behind other books on my shelf. I've finally dug it out and want to start sharing about myself with my now almost two-year-old grandson and our four other grandchildren.
As I get ready to make the turn to being 70-years-old, I find my memory about things in the past getting fuzzier. Now's the time to start sharing with those who carry some of my genes, three grandsons and two granddaughters.
One of the questions asks:
What were two major news events of your life? How did you feel about them? What influence did they have on you?
The answer is pretty easy. The first is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When it happened, I was in my high school typing class when the announcement about his murder was made over the school public address system. I remember people starting to cry. School let out and I went home.
This is long before the day of social media and cell phones. For news, we had radios and black and white television.
The second news event was the 9/11 when terrorists flew passenger jets into the twin towers in New York City and into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. I was just walking into work when it happened. It was on the television of the office building where I worked. People were afraid. They didn't know what was happening.
I will write more. This is a start. Those two events did help shape me.