One Hundred

Today, if he were alive, would be my grandfather's 100th birthday.

He was born at the tail-end of the lame-duck period of Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, a little more than a month before William H. Taft took the oath of office.

One hundred years ago, in 1909, the NAACP was founded. The first radio broadcast was transmitted via short-wave radio. The Navy opened its base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Manhattan bridge opened. Barry Goldwater, Benny Goodman, Jessica Tandy, Burl Ives, Errol Flynn were all born that year.

It seems a lifetime away - too far back to comprehend, and yet I am only two generations removed.

He dropped out of school in the eighth grade when his father died - to go to work and provide for his mother and his seven siblings. In 1923, it's just what you did when you were the eldest son.

As a young man, he was thinning sugar beets alongside a friend, when a bolt of lightning struck the ground between them. The bolt split and hit both of them. My grandfather lived. His friend did not.

He didn't marry until he was 42 years old and all of his siblings were grown, married and self-sufficient. My grandmother was 16 years his junior. His younger sister had a daughter marry the same year he did.

He loved people and animals - and made a living as a police officer, bus driver and farmer - generally working all three jobs simultaneously to provide for his wife and five children.

He made excellent candy and peanut brittle, never missed a deer hunt on horse and

As a kid I remember him in his big recliner, playing 'I've got your nose' and giggling at our horror-stricken faces. He was a big man - tall and larger than life - who delighted in children. I remember gleefully going to visit him on "the farm" - his big hands lifting me up to right Cheeto, the Shetland Pony. I remember him cutting the grass with a push mower, his penchant for growing huge vegetables and his love of rhubarb.

He was my mom's hero - they had a father-daughter bond unlike any I've ever seen before. She dreamed of growing up to become a policeman and owning horses. Instead, she became a librarian and married my father who really doesn't like horses.

He was gentle and kind and stubborn as a farm mule. My favorite memory of him was two months before he died - at my uncle's wedding reception. He cradled my day-old niece - one just come from heaven, one speedily headed that way. They sat, in perfect stillness, not needing words for their spirit to commune. Someone captured the moment on film, exactly the same way my heart did.

My last memory of him was a week or so before he died - he came down to attend my sister's baptism. He was a skeleton with skin, I hardly knew how to respond to this shrunken giant. On the way home, he developed a blood clot that put him immediately in the hospital - he lost his leg and never made it home.

He died on the day my dad planted three pine trees in our front yard - and every single time I go home, I look at those pine trees and think of him. Everyone else in my family thinks it's odd - to associate those pine trees with a man who never saw them - but I distinctly remember the day he died, and I distinctly remember dad outside planting those trees - grown tall and broad and thick now.

He died three months shy of his 83rd birthday. I was 13 years old - the oldest of the grandchildren - one of the only to remember him before he grew sick and frail. I remember my mom's devastation, my grandmother's steadfast refusal to ever again utter the words "joy" or "fun" after he passed. I penned a poem about his passing the night before the funeral - it was only then that I cried at his passing. He was the first direct relative I had lost to death. Grandpa died knowing only 8 of his 16 grandchildren.

It seems odd to me that my grandfather would be older than most of my friends' great-grandfathers. His grandparents crossed the plains as pioneers, a mere sixty years before he was born. His life seems so remote, so far away, so far removed from the modern, crazy world we live in today. He was an adult through the Great Depression, too old to serve in World War II, a senior citizen when my parents married.

In the centennial year of his birth, were he alive, my grandfather would welcome great-grandchildren #3 and #4. His home and farm have been long sold - after the passing of my grandmother more than six years ago. His possessions have all been divided among children and grandchildren. His siblings have all passed. What remains of his generation, his life, are memories and photographs - fleeting glimpses of the hard-working, gentle man who answered to the name Ed.

Happy 100th Birthday, Grandpa. We still miss you.