Happy 103rd Birthday, Grandpa
My grandfather, G. Homer Skarin, would have been 103 years old today. Here he is on his 87th birthday in 2008, with my grandmother, Lois, and my second daughter (who’s now finishing her junior year of high school).
Let me tell you about him.
Papa, as we called him, was born in Batavia, Illinois. He survived the Great Depression because his father worked for Union Pacific, one of the few good jobs around.
Papa attended Cornell (the one in Iowa), where he met my grandmother. World War II was already on, so he became an Ensign in the Pacific. He saw the Marines raise the flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, and spoke in awe of thousands of ships all laying on their whistles at once as it happened.
My grandmother married him in 1944 while he was on leave. They were married sixty-six years until he died and had four children.
After the war, Papa took a job at the U.S. Capital working for the House Appropriations Committee.
It was supposed to be a six-month internship. He retired from it in the late 1970s.
He wrote the bills that funded NASA and put the man on the moon. His prized possessions included several “earthrise” pictures signed by astronauts, kept in his office.
But I remember Papa for who he really was. My grandparents moved from Virginia to Wheaton when I was ten. For many years, my siblings and I spent Thursday after school until next morning with them.
Papa let us use his power tools, helped us build balsa airplanes, and only scolded mildly when we lit old firecrackers in the basement. He funded our crazy projects and let us swim in the detention pond when it rained.
He introduced us to Popular Mechanics and National Geographic and watched the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour religiously. He complained about trimming the “whisk brooms” that grew out of his ears.
Eventually he met several of my children, his great-grandchildren. When our oldest was born, he was so proud that he came to see her every day for a week.
He was a wonderful, curmudgeonly good-natured man.
I miss him. I’m glad I got to know him well.
P.S. What good memories do you have of your grandparents?
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