...My Grandpa

Drinking a glass of Crown Royal tonight and listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford "Just A Closer Walk With Thee".

My Grandpa died a year ago today.  We all knew it was coming.  Intellectually we all know no one can live forever; emotionally we all wish they could.  Before his funeral, the question of the eulogy hung in the air.  My aunt blatantly admitted she couldn’t give it.  My mom was steeling herself to getting up and speaking.  The pastor gently said no one had to say anything, she could pass the family’s thoughts.  I didn’t like any of those options, so I gave it.  Below is the eulogy…

Dr Seuss said it best…Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened.  I’m not sure if Dr Seuss realized how much easier that is said than done.  We are going to cry, hell, we’ve been crying and we’ll continue to cry.  But we’ve also been laughing this week and we’ll continue to laugh.  We’ll laugh and we’ll cry and we’ll think back on him and his life and we’ll smile.  Smile because he happened.  Smile because we had Jim Goldhahn, my Grandpa, in our lives.

Read the inside of the program if you want to get a sense of Jim Goldhahn.  He was Just A Man.  Grandpa wasn’t a great man by Lincolnian standards.  He didn’t cure cancer or invent penicillin or shoot bin Laden.  He was just a man.  But he was a man with an unmatched work ethic who worked his butt off at anything he ever did.  He farmed.  He did construction.  He ran water lines for Geraldine.  He managed the grain elevator here in town.  He and Jean raised a family of three sometimes (and from the stories I’ve heard often times…) out of control girls.  And you all know his three daughters so you understand that alone should make him qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize!  He was just a man but its men like him that make this country great.  I’m not going to stand up here and paraphrase Tom Brokaw but Jim Goldhahn, and his other brothers who served, Harold, John, Bob, Chuck and Hank, really were the greatest generation.  They built this country from the ground up and my generation has nothing but thanks, respect and love for people like Jim and his surviving brother Hank.

No kidding…its men like him that enabled America to beat the Soviets in the Cold War.  And actually if you think about it, it was my Grandpa who beat the Soviets.  I always knew he spent a couple years in Alaska in the Army but for some reason I always thought he was Infantry.  It could have been that, as an Air Force member, I assume everyone in the Army is infantry, but I thank God that I asked Grandpa the night of his birthday, exactly a week ago today, what he actually did up there in Alaska.  He told me he listened to the Russians.  And when I was looking at his discharge paperwork after all of this happened I saw exactly what he meant.  Grandpa was a teletype interceptor.  How cool is that?  Because trust me, we don’t have teletype interceptors anymore…in fact I’m pretty sure teletype intercepting is a lost art.  Grandpa was GI Joe.  Not GI Joe the Great American Hero Action Figure but GI Joe, General Issue American.  He was the kid who rode his horse Beauty around Haystack Butte on the family homestead, who married the girl of his dreams whom he met at the local post office, spilled coffee in her lap when they first met, and then almost slipped while he carried her through the mud on the way to the Junior Prom (we’re all lucky we’re here).  He was the man who answered the call from his country to spend two years listening to the Russians in Alaska and then came home to raise a family of three in Small Town, America.  I’ll say it again…Grandpa was Just A Man but he is the kind of man who makes this country great and I’ll never be able to express how incredibly proud of him I am.

You know…I asked the family what they remembered of Grandpa and what they would always remember of him.  It was things like his love of outdoors and his infinite patience as Laura continually cast her fishing rod across the creek into the trees, making Grandpa wade over to untangle it.  It was his ability to build or fix anything…even when mom came home one day after school demanding Grandpa build her an abacus in second grade to take to school the next day.  It was his sense of civic responsibility…taking Diane out to help mow the Geraldine cemetery, even though Diane kept breaking the lawn mower.  It was the yellow popcorn bowl he used for his air popped popcorn.  His green chair in Geraldine.  It was Russ and I bringing Crunch Bar Ice Cream bars to his grain elevator and getting chastised (in a good Grandpa way) for bringing an ice cream bar with rice into his wheat elevator.  It was him calling all of us Fiery Misohippuses and Yayhoos.  Teaching his girls to shoot.  And then taking them deer hunting at five in the morning.  Because mom was the oldest she got to ride in the cab while Laura and Diane were stuck in the back.  To get back at their big sister, Laura and Diane would eat all the sack lunches of liverwurst sandwiches and Big Hunk candy bars before 10 o’clock.  It was him standing on the bank of Aklee Lake fishing.  It was the peanut shell garbage can.  Or watching his bullriding on TV.  Hooking up the fifth-wheel camper to go camping out at Crystal Lake.  Raising his tomatoes in his garden that took up almost an entire city lot…You know his rows were so precise none of us would have been surprised if he had a compass and survey equipment out there to plant.  It was his Clint Eastwood lip-twitch.  And his insistence that you always filled up your car with gas before leaving town…how ironic that I almost ran out of gas yesterday on my way in to Great Falls yesterday.  It was the home built camper which was then upgraded to the Suburban named Hoopie.  It was him as a huge NBA and NFL fan but insisting he watch the games on mute because he couldn’t stand listening to Howard Cossell.  It was him and his infinite care in helping Grandma transport wedding cakes all over Montana…because really, who would have guessed Grandpa was an expert at setting up wedding cakes.

But you know, after all the memories, all of the laughing and crying and eating and drinking, what will always remain of Grandpa is his legacy.  And his legacy is his family.  Jim and Jean Goldhahn raised success.  Pure 100% success.  Out of Geraldine, MT and their small house on Main Street they raised my Mom, the Alpha Dog of the sisters, who runs the Aviation Department of the US Forest Service and is, as one Special Forces soldier named Frank Norbury put it, “the best goddam pilot whose plane I have ever had to privilege to jump out of”.  And they raised Diane, a teacher in Willow Creek, MT, one of the few remaining multi-grade schools in the state; and there is absolutely no profession more honorable or more important than teaching our children.  They raised Laura, president of Benefis hospital in Great Falls, and trust me, if you’re ever sick or you cant find a parking spot in the hospital parking lot its good to know Laura. All three of his girls approach flying, teaching, and hospital administration with the focus, commitment, passion and love you would expect from Jim Goldhahn.  But it didn’t stop there, that success has then raised more success.  Russ…who is single-handedly farming a 3,500 acre farm near Loma.  Michelle…who will graduate from MSU-Bozeman with a degree in business marketing in May.  Christopher...who just turned 19 yesterday and in his first year of college but Chris, I got to admit, I was sitting by Grandma when you called the day Grandpa passed…the most caring young man you could imagine.  And okay, because they wouldn’t let me get through this without saying where I’m at…I’m doing alright for myself as an Air Force major at Ft Bragg, NC.  I can’t complain.  And I guarantee that success will then raise more success.  40, 50, 60 years from now our grandkids will be standing here talking about us and those grandkids will know exactly where they came from.

Nicholas Sparks couldn’t have written it better.  Grandpa was there surrounded by his entire family celebrating his 21st birthday.  He was a leap year baby so we were all excited that he was finally legal to drink.  And in true Goldhahn fashion his birthday party had turned in to a four-day affair.  There we were, joking, laughing, eating, drinking.  Steaks and baked potatoes and chocolate cake with his favorite 7-minute frosting one night…Grandpa standing there making sure Grandma and I were frosting it just right…like Grandma doesn’t know how to frost a cake.  Pizza and beer a second night.  Plans being laid for the ham dinner (another favorite) over the weekend to culminate the birthday celebration…we never quite got to that dinner.

I like to think that when Grandpa lay down to go to bed on the night of March 2nd, he smiled to himself and thought “Wow, we did good with this family”.  A few hours later he and our Lord decided it was time to go, and with his wife of 62 years by his side, he called it quits.  We should all be so lucky.

I’ll go back to Dr Seuss.  “Don’t cry because its over…smile because it happened”.  So Grandma…Mom, Diane, Laura…Frankie…Russ, Michelle, Christopher.  We’re all going to cry and there’s nothing that can stop that.  We’re going to cry and miss him and every time we get together from here on out there will be a hole, a giant Grandpa-sized hole, that we will attempt to fill with tears and food and wine because that’s what we do.  Maybe some beer because when you looked around the kitchen there was always one beer drinker in a family of wine drinkers, and it was typically the good stuff like MGD.  But because we’re Goldhahn’s we’re going to fill that hole with laughter too.  Lets not cry because its over, lets remember to smile because he happened.  Smile because Jim Goldhahn made this family.  And smile because he will always be with us…until we’re back with him.

I want to close by extending a thank you to the Benefis Peace Hospice for helping all of our loved ones pass on.  Thank you to Schnider Funeral Home for helping with all of this and making our entire lives easier this week.  To Pastor Dotti and the Methodist Church, Don Hazen for the beautiful flowers, John Kutzman and Kim Owen for their beautiful music.  And a special thank you to all our friends and family who came out to show their respects to my Grandpa and support to my Grandma.

God Bless Jim Goldhahn and God Bless the United States of America.  And Give Em Hell Harry.  Thank you.