Photoessay #1106 - My grandfather

Our group from the summer Guided Autobiography class continues to meet every two weeks. Yesterday, our topic was grandparents.

I wrote about my grandfather. The picture was taken at my college graduation. Not too good of me and, yes, that dress was too short. Nice picture of my grandfather though.
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My parents were part of a movement of young educated people who moved away from their home communities to take professional jobs with large companies. My mother's family had been in New Haven, Connecticut for many generations. My father's family was based in Boston. My father graduated from Cornell and had a masters from Harvard in Engineering. Anti-semitism blocked some of his options but soon after he married my mom, he found an engineering job at Aerojet in southern California. So off they went to Glendora California, where I was born.

They never returned to New England to live, they changed cities several times always because of my father's work transfers and opportunities. Though they actively participated in the communities where they lived, they never really felt any allegiance to that community or that that place was 'home'.

My mom enjoyed going back to visit New Haven but never thought she should move back there.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I did not live in the same community as my grandparents. They came to visit once/year or so but I never spent that much time with them on a regular basis.

However, I did have a very close relationship with my paternal grandfather Harold Ginsburgh. A proud, intelligent Harvard man, he did not suffer fools and he didn't have much patience for children. From modest beginnings, he developed much of the field of actuarial statistics, was president of the national professional organization and became a vice president of a large insurance company. He valued education above all else. He always identified first and foremost as a Harvard man. However, as stern as he could be, he had a huge soft spot in his heart for me, his first grandchild. He figured that I was as intelligent as he (not close, I'm sure) and I could really do no wrong. He had 5 other grandchildren but he was most interested in me. My mom worked to keep him on the straight and narrow as far as favoritism and he generally did ok . As an adult, he would often send me plane tickets to visit and I would often hear important family news before my parents.
He loved to take his classics books off his shelf and read things in the original latin or greek. He loved to talk about them and I loved listening to him, when I had the chance which wasn't often.

When I was in college, I worked on a family history and I attempted to interview him. I would ask questions like "Did your mother have any brothers or sisters?"
And he would thunder at me wagging his finger. :"Sandy! Sandy! I have told you and told you, I don't remember why do you keep asking me??". Then a pause "She had two sisters"

Anybody else would have been intimidated by his loud show of sternness and disapproval. Not me. I could wait him out.

So I would continue "What were their names?"

Again, he would wag his finger at me and maybe even louder "Sandy! Sandy I have told you, I do not remember. I probably never knew" Then a pause "Their names were Sara and Miriam"

And so it would go through the rest of the interview. Nobody in my family could believe I could handle him, a first rate fussbudget who expected to get his own way at all times. I didn't worry, I knew he would deliver the goods if I asked him.
When he died, I felt that the one person who loved me unconditionally was gone. I wondered, did my brother and sister think THEY were the favorites? I asked them. They both laughed and said "No, of course not, it was ALWAYS you"