Grandpa Glass

This post is being written directly to Tyler, and I'd love for people to add to it if they'd like.

Tyler, last Saturday (March 24th) would have been your Grandpa Glass's 82nd birthday. We held his funeral that day. He died on March 20th, the last day of winter.

Grandpa with his brothers, Uncle Chuck and Uncle Jim, aka "The Three Wise Men."

My earlies memories of Grandpa Glass include him carrying me by my ankles or over his shoulder, hanging down his back. I remember begging him to read to me - the books I picked for him to read were tough on his vocal chords.I especially loved for him to read Uncle Remus's Brer Rabbit. He also liked the Richard Scarry books. Another early memory was of him building model airplanes, then going out in our backyard to fly them.

On holidays, he'd often take Uncle Roger and me to wooded agreas like Great Falls. I remember him showing us a seed pod that when squeezed, would emit a puff of dust, and our excitement at discovering burrs stuck to us. He had a gift for making the mundane exciting, like telling me he was eating a special kind of witch...a sand....witch, then offering to make me a sand...witch to eat, too.

Grandpa and I also had fun wrapping gifts at Christmas time - it wasn't enough to wrap the gift, we had to wrap it in such a way as to disguise what the gift was. A tiny gift might be wrapped in a huge box, a square gift might be wrapped in a cyliner, with ribbons attached to make it look like an oversized firecracker...

Grandpa would fly a flag on all the patriotic holidays, and instilled in us the importance of flag etiquette. However, flag etiquette on ship is a bit different than on land. On land, we're taught to take down the flag during rain or snow. One holiday, as it began to sprinkle, I ran to tell Grandpa we needed to retrieve our flag. He responded, "Oh - no! On ship, the flag gets wet all the time! We'd say the flag was getting a good washing!"

I remember Grandpa working with me on multiplication and division flashcards, and later, my mom telling me to ask my dad for help with my math homework. I often found this to be frustrating, and remember vividly one night standing, shifting my body weight from one leg to another, having long tuned out his rambling explanation, only to tune in long enough to hear him to say, "But, that's calculus." "Dad. I'm in the third grade." "Hey, YOU asked ME for help."

Grandpa held degrees in Mathmatics and Electrical Engineering (a master's degree. He didn't see much use for earning a PhD.) He often sat out on the back porch, doing calculus problems just for fun. He was fascinated with understanding how everything worked. He would occasionally turn on the water faucet and invite me to come study the flow of water - wide as it exited the faucet, then narrower midway down towards the sink, then slightly wider right as it made contact with the sink. When he'd notice my glazed eyes, he'd say, "Engineers are curious. You're not an engineer." Still, it wouldn't be long before he'd show me raindrops traveling down a window or the path of water streaming from a fountain.

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, he finished his job at Logicon and entered retirement, aka stay-at-home dad. He took on a good bit of the chauffering, all of the cooking, and much of the cleaning, and so quickly inspired Grandma Glass to find a job outside the home.

That was about the time when Uncle Eddie brought home a really cool puppy who came to be known as Tibet. Grandpa grumbled and griped, saying "The person who didn't want the dog in the first place ends up cleaning up the mess." Yet over time, Tibet won his way into Grandpa's heart, and Grandpa took that dog everywhere - to the woods a couple of times a week to explore off-leash, to run errands, and even to the allergist for my allergy shots. He built a special seat for him to ride in the pickup truck so he wouldn't slide across the seat during turns. He called him "Pupdog",based on a favorite comic strip, and even  let Tibet claim a captain's chair in the living room as his own, for spying on the neighbors through the living room window.

Grandpa seemed to know how to fix just about everything, and if he didn't know how to fix it, he at least was usually able to rig it. This of course, wasn't actually true, so I would get quite disappointed if he wasn't able to repair, say, a broken timing belt, right there, on the spot. Grandpa also would focus so intently that he'd lose all track of time. Many a day I would come out to the driveway to leave for work, only to discover the car was in pieces and he was in the midst of an oil change or repair. His multi-tasking capabilility was amazing. As he sat reading Scientific American, he was also listening to music and listening in on my conversations, which I'd realize later when he'd ask a question about something I'd said when I thought he wasn't listening.

Nothing was more important to Grandpa than ethics and doing the right thing. We grew up knowing this, and yet I was surprised when I learned that doing the right thing was more important than honoring rank. I came home from work one night, upset with myself for being outspoken toward a boss who was punishing a child who hadn't misbehaved. I relayed the information to my father (oddly, I voluntarily brought my misdeeds to Grandpa for feedback) who interrupted me, saying gruffly - "Hey. You did the right thing. Fairness is something children need. That child was being treated unfairly, and she will always remember you for what you did, even though it didn't help. You stood up for her. That was the right thing to do." I later shared this story with Grandpa's brother, who filled me in on the level of Grandpa Glass's integrity - that Grandpa Glass, while in the Coast Guard, defied a direct order because it would unnecessarily put men in harm's way. He had found another way to accomplish the necessary task, and implemented it, though it would permanently stall his military career. He would never get promoted past Commander, and yet he never regretted his decision, because it was the right thing to do.

Grandpa had a special love of music, especially jazz. He taught himself the piano, and eventually revealed to me that he was actually eavesdropping on me playing the piano and the guitar, especially when a talented musician friend of mine was working with me. Because Grandpa loved jazz, he could appreciate ska, my favorite music genre in late high school. So often, parents and their teenagers have conflict over music - "Turn that crap down!!!" so it was very cool that my dad and I could enjoy the same music.

Grandpa had wonderful stories from his childhood and young adulthood, but they were buried within his story telling. He could even make trainhopping sound boring. Yes, your grandpa hopped trains. As a teenager, each summer he'd hop trains to get to Nebraska, where he'd work on a farm. When the school year was about to begin, he'd hop trains to return home in time to start school. He was quick to say that trainhopping is nothing like in the movies - no running after a moving train, jumping, then climbing on. Instead, it was a matter of waiting for a train to stop, finding the ideal car to hide in, and hoping no "hobos" found you. "Hobos are NOT nice people!" he would passionately exclaim. Grandpa also would reminisce about his childhood  - making slick tracks on the playground on snowy days - all the schoolboys would form a line and rub their foot back and forth on the snow to turn it into ice, then line up, run, and slide on the ice, while the boys still in the line would kick or block the slider. Aunt Jonell is much better at relaying Grandpa's stories than I am - she had the patience and attention span to listen to the entire story and distill the funny parts.

Grandpa was the ultimate skeptic. He used to say, over and over, "Never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see." When I was in college, he'd asked me what I'd learned, then upon my explanation, would say "Well, I'd take that with a grain of salt." When I attempted to apply my new-found understanding of physics to real-life applications, he'd respond, "There's other variables you're not taking into consideration here."

This was often a source of frustration to me, but by my late teens and especially after I moved to Tucson, I learned to appreciate Grandpa's expansive knowledge and impressive abilities. I often would call him for advice on how to fix things. One of my favorite moments with him was on the phone, while your cousin Payton was being born - things weren't going well, and I admitted that I was scared for Aunt Jonell. Grandpa admitted he was nervous too, and said, "What you ought to do is have a beer." "Dad, I'm not 21 yet." "Go ask your R.A. for a beer. Tell her your father says you need one." (Obviously, the R.A. refused. But the moment was precious to me.)

Grandpa remained playful throughout his adulthood. We often conspired to pull pranks on Grandma, and some of my favorite memories were of him playing with your cousins, especially sledding in Danvers. He once talked me into running and flopping down on the sled, face first on my stomach, to go down a steep hill with some awesome bumps, assuring me he would do it after me. Then when he saw Aunt Jonell scolding me for being a bad influence on her children by performing such a dangerous stunt, he denied that he'd put me up to it or that he intended to do the same thing. His playfulness was probably my favorite thing about him.

Grandpa spent Christmas with us this year- we went to the Train Museum and the Air Museum. You immediately became interested in airplanes and trains, and you still are, three months later. You get excited when you see a plane in the sky, or when we see a train as we drive home from work. Grandpa built Uncle Eddie a really cool electric train track when he was little, and it's still in Grandma's basement. One day she'll show it to you, hopefully we can get it to run. I hope that as you grow, you'll ask your aunts, uncles, and cousins to tell you more Grandpa stories.