Wisdom from the Greatest Generation

Through the fog of Alzheimer's, my granddad shared a lesson I'll never forget.

Harold Jones, Kentucky Military Institute circa 1930s

“Character Makes the Man” was a motto that was quite literally drilled into Harold Jones, my grandfather, when he was a young teen in the 1930s at Kentucky Military Institute. After who knows how many Saturdays spent marching around the parade field as a punishment for some infraction, this motto began to take root in his life. As his granddaughter, I was the beneficiary of such hard-learned lessons that molded him into the man he became.

Harold was a consummate gentleman who loved God, his family, and his country. At 16 years of age, he met my grandmother Dotty in a true case of “love at first sight.” She was tagging along to a party at the Jones home with a friend who couldn’t stop talking about “Harold Jones” who was home from KMI on Christmas break. I don’t know what happened to that friendship, but Dotty ended up marrying Harold only a few years later. She was the love of his life for more than 70 years.

In the early 2000s, it became apparent that my grandfather, once an engineer for NASA’s Agena, Atlas, Centaur, Titan, and Ranger programs, was succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease. He eventually lost his ability to speak—except when he was singing love songs like “A Bicycle Built for Two” or hymns. I wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking or capable of comprehending, but one day he gave me a gift that shocked me and made it abundantly clear that he was still listening and caring for his family.

I was at home from graduate school for the weekend—and was always feeling pressed for time. One evening at supper, I expressed frustration to my parents in the presence of my grandparents. It seemed that I was always studying or going from one scheduled thing to the next. Everything—everyone—felt like an interruption or an irritation. I hated feeling that way.

Well, Granddad was listening to me, and he understood what I was saying because later in the day as I was studying on the couch, he walked in and handed me a wall decoration that he had brought with him when he and Dotty moved in with my parents once they needed greater assistance for day-to-day living. The plaque displayed a poem called “The Difference,” and the words were just what I needed to hear:

Wall plaque from my grandfather.

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day; I had so much to accomplish that I didn’t have time to pray.

Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. “Why doesn’t God help me?” I wondered. He answered, “You didn’t ask.”

I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak: I wondered why God didn’t show me. He said, “But you didn’t seek.”

I tried to come into God’s presence; I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, “My child, you didn’t knock.”

I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day: I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.

My granddad was a wise man with character above reproach—and the world was a better place because of him. I am a better person because of him.