Conversations with My Dead Grandparents

I am very fortunate to have had wonderful grandparents.

My grandfather was born in 1893. He was a WWI flyer, a Georgia Tech graduate, an electrical engineer, an avid reader (including sitting for what seemed like hours at a time reading the dictionary). He obsessively followed the hourly stock market reports on WOR radio out of New York City. He was a quiet man who valued his southern roots but who never felt a need to display a Confederate flag.

He was a Republican.

My grandmother was born in 1897. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1919. She was a suffragette, and she remained active in the League of Women Voters for her entire life. Family lore has it that the only job she ever had was during World War II, when she worked for a time in a factory that assembled fuses for bombs. Details are somewhat sparse. She recycled before there was a word for recycling. She, too, was an avid reader. She was a mother and grandmother.

She was a Republican.

They were members of the Audubon Soci…