The Greatest Men I Ever Knew

Hi Everyone,

Today I want to talk to you about someone who was very special to me.  He was one of the greatest men I ever knew.  His name was Thelbert Sanford Rawle and he was/is my grandfather.  I say was/is because he was my grandfather while he was here on earth and he is still my grandfather.  He is in both my future and my past but not my present.  Confusing?  Well that's a different opinion altogether.  Let me tell you a few things about my grandfather.  He left us a few years ago and while he was here, I really didn't understand how great he was.

Well let's start with what he was not.  He never owned a large company, never wrote a best selling novel, never went to law school and never had a lot of money.  See, when most of us consider what success looks like - fame, power, money, etc., Sanford Rawle would not have been considered all that great.  Notice I didn't call him Thelbert.  No one did that I know of.  He didn't like his first name.  So why is he the greatest man I have ever knew?

Well, its funny that the older I get the more I realize why.  While Granddad didn't do things that would put his name in the paper, he did something that most people don't do enough.  He impacted other people's lives.

This Labor Day, we had a gathering at my cousin AB's house.  They were so gracious to have us and I really enjoyed it.  But while we were sitting around telling stories and laughing and getting extremely loud (that's what Rawle's do), I could see him there.  He would have been telling stores and laughing harder than the rest of us.  If you looked closely into his eyes, there was always a sparkle but more importantly, there was always love.  He was the image of what I think love should look like.  He wasn't flashy, he wasn't always trying to get attention, he just went about living life and loving his family.  He was married to one woman, my grandmother, Margie, for 68 years.  I can't even imagine that.

When I look at what he was able to accomplish, I am astounded.  See I have a lot of formal education, he had a lot of informal smarts.  He didn't have people to teach him how to do stuff, so he taught himself.  If something needed to be fixed, they didn't have the money to get it repaired so he figured out how to fix it himself.  I never in all my life saw him ask for a handout but he always had hand out to help someone else.

I remember one time my house needed a new front door.  Granddad heard about it and came over to help me put one on.  Now I didn't just need a new front door, I needed a new door frame and the whole works. Granddad was in his seventies at the time and he just showed up for work one Saturday ready to help his grandson.  Well, we got the door jam and all out and it was laying in the front yard.  Since I had never seen him fail at fixing something, I just knew he would be able to help me fix this.  So I asked him, how many of these he had done before.  After all, he had 70+ years experience at fixing things.  This shouldn't be any big deal.  I was shocked to hear him say that this was his first time.  True to Sanford Rawle form, we got the door put in right.

Here are some things I learned from him.
1.  Laugh often and laugh a lot - It didn't take much to get him started and once you did, he would laugh for ever.  If you look at pictures, he almost always had a smile on his face.  I learned something about that smile.  It was contagious.  You didn't get around him for very long before you were smiling too.  As a matter of fact, if you were around him for a very long time, your jaws would hurt from laughing so hard.

2.  Love isn't a language or words, its a life.  Granddad loved his family and almost everyone he came in contact with.  He didn't just say I love you, he lived I love you.  He was the type of man who was there for you when you needed him.  We all know people who say, call if you need anything and then always have an excuse why they can't help.  He wasn't that man.

3.  Your family is important.  This is something that most of my generation has lost.  His brothers, sisters, and wife were his best friends.  They went on vacation together, the spent holidays together, they played games together.  Not only that but he loved his kids and grand kids.  He was always patient with us.  I only hope and pray that one day I can be more like him, especially in the area of patience.  He was always giving to his family.  While he didn't spend large amounts of money on us that I remember, he gave me things that are far more valuable.  He gave me a joker (this is a card and marble game) board that he made by hand.  He gave all of his children wagon replicas of the one he used as a kid to all of his children.  Mom, Unc and Unc, how much money would it take to buy that wagon from you? They may not read this so but I feel pretty confident I can answer - The wagon isn't for sale at any price.  I still have a tool box that we built together when I was probably six or seven.



3.  Granddad taught me a lot about gossip.  He didn't ever that I remember.  Enough said.

4.  Mind your own business.  My granddad never got into my personal business unless I asked him.  Because of this, when I did ask, I was much more apt to listen to what he said.

5.  Don't eat your own.  Too many times in a family we have a tendency to talk badly about each other.  We think we know what everyone else should do and how they should do it and we aren't afraid to tell them exactly what we think regardless of whether or not it helps or hurts.  My grandfather wasn't like that.

6.  THIS ONE IS HUGE - Have a tender heart.  I often saw my grandfather's heart touched.  He hurt when his loved ones hurt and he was happy for them when they succeeded.  It didn't take much to touch him and I desperately want to be more like that.  As he got older, he knew that his time here was running out and I can remember many times that he would tear up while praying over a meal.  Those tears were almost always for the family that he loved so dearly.

I could go on for many pages but I will finish with one that is very close to his family.

7.  "Make us ever mindful that there are people in this world who have need and have less than we." - When Granddad said the blessing, he finished each prayer that I ever remember with those words.  The funny thing is, he meant them every time he said them.  Now he meant this when it came to material things - ask anyone who didn't finish their meal about those Ethiopians.  But he also knew something that it took me 40 years of life to understand.  True riches aren't measured in what you have, they are measured in who you know.  While he will not go down in history as a man with much material wealth, he will go down as one of the most wealthy people ever because he knew how to love and realized early on what the real treasures of life were - people.

Granddad, I don't know if you can read this in Heaven or not but I want you to know that you are one of the greatest men I have ever had the privilege of knowing.  I can only hope to measure up to the standard you left.  I love you very much and hope to make you proud one day by being more like you.

To everyone else, I want to leave you with the lyrics of a song -

I've lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed

So I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there's no second chance to tell her how I feel

Cause if tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her

So tell that someone that you love
Just what your thinking of
If tomorrow never comes

The Opinion of the Minion