What I remember
about JCW:He had the first calculator I ever saw. It had a cord instead of batteries. I didn't know about decimals yet so I kept trying to enter 1.2.3.4 and getting frustrated when it didn't work.
He consulted at a steel or engineering firm (I assume from the name) Ferro and would get weird corporate presents like medallions and letter-openers which he would pass on to CLH and me. The little box the medallion came in now holds my paperclips.
He had a lemon, nearly electric yellow-green Karmen Ghia that I craved, and a Jeep that was scarier than the dickens that he used to tote wood. Then he got rid of both and bought a white Escort. I missed those two cars. Then he bought a motor home.
JCW2 tells a story about JCW sneaking in through the cellar one autumn night and dragging a chain, petrifying his children (hiding under the sewing machine) and severely pssing off his wife.
My grandparents had His chair and Her end of the couch, just like my parents, just like the Bunkers. Wasn't everyone like that?
When CLH and BJW went to Charles and Diana's wedding (yes, that Prince Charles and Lady Diana; remind me to tell the story), I stayed with my grandparents for the week. The only time (ever) I remember doing something with him too (not just my grandmother and me) was when we went to the Trolley Museum in East Haven or somewhere.
When Connecticut stopped having front license plates, he bought himself a vanity one that said "The Devil Made Me Do It." He bought one for DEW that said "Let me tell you about my grandchildren." When he got the motor home he bought it a license plate too: "We're spending our children's inheritance."
He tried to get me to be an accountant, thinking it foolish (as did so many of my family) to pursue Liberal Arts (the adjective frightens them as much as the noun). When I got Veronica and everyone wanted an explanation, he could not understand why I used her to process words rather than to crunch numbers.
SSP and I took the canoe to NSF once, putting the rack on Fugly and fastening the thing securely. I wasn't going to endanger my father's boat, after all. Before we left, my grandparents came over, and JCW assumed we young whippersnappers had done a shoddy job (nothing being done right unless he did it himself). He jerked the canoe so hard the Omni rocked.
The photograph above is from my wedding. CLH captioned many photographs and that one is "Soul Train." I thought from her expression that he asked her (which I thought was pretty cool) but she asked him. This shows less vim and vigor, but he did go along with her. (Anything to hide RDC and me humiliating ourselves in the background!)
After he moved into my mother's house, he wanted to borrow some books from Phoebe but could show the clerk only an expired Henry Hull card from Clinton. The clerk told him that until his card was ready, he could borrow on a related housemate's account. He suggested my mother, but of course my mother had allowed her card to expire, and when the clerk saw my grandmother's account with the same name in the same house, naturally she assumed the two Ws were related. As he stumbled through an explanation of their divorce, AAC emerged from the office and dealt with the situation (which is how I heard about it).
ABW drove me to the airport after my mother's second wedding, and she and NKW and I stopped at the house after the beach to get my stuff. I introduced ABW and NKW to my grandparents as I collected my paraphernalia and minutes later JCW asked for ABW's name again, saying, "I know the little guy's name is N----, but what's the girl's name?" I thought that was very sweet and forgetful of him.
CLH contributed this: once JCW and she had missed the ice cream truck as it passed our grandparents' house, and they chased down in the Karmen Ghia.
A cousin (on my father's side) remembered my grandparents coming with us to her family's Christmas parties, remembers him smiling and having a good time.
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Last modified: 19 June 1999
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