Memories of my Grandpa

My grandfather died about five years before I was born, and since I am one of the youngest cousins in my family, I am one of the few who never met him. However, he has still has had a significant impact on my life. My grandparents bought the land for our cabin in 1960, the year my mother was born. The lot was on a small lake in Northwest Minnesota. My mother grew up spending her summers at this cabin, and my brother and I did as well. It was the place where we learned about nature, where we played with our cousins, and where we came together as a family. It’s the place where my family spread my grandfather’s ashes when he died.

Every weekend of every summer while I was growing up, we would go up to the cabin, and my grandma would always tell us about our grandpa. I think it was her way of coping with him being gone. She wanted his influence to live on in her grandchildren. My grandpa was a ‘wizz kid’ as my grandma says, he was very smart and went through school very quickly. He was the youngest and brightest in his class at medical school, and then went off to the Korean War to be a doctor for the soldiers. He came back, worked at the Mayo Clinic, and met my grandma, a nurse, and they got married and had four kids. My grandpa had extremely high expectations of all his kids, and my mom and her brothers and sister all have memories that mostly consist of trying to life up to his high standards for how they should perform in school, what jobs they should get etc.

My parents are not that way with me at all, and I think that was a conscious decision on their part. They want me to succeed in school, but they have never tried to tell me what I am ‘expected’ to do with my life. However, I don’t think anyone thinks of my grandpa in a negative way. He helped all my aunts and uncles get though school, and are a big reason why they have all been so successful in their lives.

I think that because I have never known my grandpa but heard so many stories about him during summers at the cabin, I have wanted to know more about him, and shaped an image of what he was like in my mind. This made me think about what we have been talking about in class, how history can be told from different perspectives, and be somewhat ‘untruthful’ without someone actually intending to lie. The image I have in my head of my grandpa is basically the perfect heroic soldier, who became a super successful doctor, an amazing dad, and a perfect husband. This image I have acquired from my grandma, who has told me stories of how amazing grandpa was. Although some of this might be glamorized because my grandma misses him and is trying to glorify his legacy for her grandchildren, the stories have held on in my mind. For the rest of our lives, that is how my cousins and I will think of our grandpa. We will think of him as a great man, in much the same way as the history books portray George Washington, or others as great men.