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Whenever I interviewed elders for my Good Grandpa book, whether it was my Aunt Lois, a retired pro football grandpa, or the Dalai Lama, I always concluded by asking for…
Whenever I interviewed elders for my Good Grandpa book, whether it was my Aunt Lois, a retired pro football grandpa, or the Dalai Lama, I always concluded by asking for their #1 most essential wisdom.
As you can imagine, I learned some wonderful things along the way. Their ideas where like beautiful antiques, enough to fill a chest in the attic one might come across one day and open with great delight.
Just a few weeks after I submitted the manuscript to my publisher, my wife and I received another gift: our son is expecting his third child early next year — another girl. This will bring our tally of grandchildren to five, which we are of course over the moon about. It also means that our eldest granddaughter, Roen—now 6—will have two little sisters. We took Roen and her little sister, Mae, out for a delicious gluten-free brunch to celebrate. As I watched them chatting away and devouring their breakfast sandwiches, I thought again about all those #1 things that the elders shared with me. And here before me was an “elder” in a different form, still a child, but a big sister who perhaps had some wisdom to share. So, on a lark, I asked Roen for her #1 most essential wisdom.
“No matter what you want to do,” Roen replied, “be your best at it.”
This sounded so adult-like I thought maybe I’d misheard her. But sure enough, this six-year-old girl had in fact shared some excellent wisdom with us. It’s possible her parents, or her other grandparents, had shared these exact words with her recently and she was parroting them back. Or she’d learned this on her own. Or something in-between.
There was a lesson there for me in that moment, something that brought back memories of my time as a young father: don’t assume that children have nothing meaningful to contribute.
In fact, do the opposite. There is often a freshness to their thinking, an innate wisdom that too often gets lost in the shuffle when they grow up and get distracted by the heavy demands of adulthood. The treasure chests of childhood wisdom are typically overlooked simply because we assume they are not there.
I’d been seeking wisdom only from old people like me, but perhaps—like love—wisdom is actually all around.
When I was growing up with my four older brothers, all of them very large like me, my mother became masterful at making meals that could feed our small army….
When I was growing up with my four older brothers, all of them very large like me, my mother became masterful at making meals that could feed our small army.
She didn’t just make one big pot of baked ziti, she’d make two. Loaves of her delicious homemade bread would cover the kitchen counters. Our giant salad bowl could hold a whole garden. When dinner started, it was like a pack of wolves had been released, and soon what at first looked like a lot of food was no longer there. My mom, five foot ten inches tall, would remain standing, busy shoveling more food onto the table. If there was a smidgen of ziti or whatever remaining in the pot, she’d hold it in front of us and command, “Eat this up!”
I recall one night where mom had made meatloaf. We ate almost the entire pan. About an hour after dinner, my brother John said to our mom, “I’m still hungry.” She replied, “Finish up the meatloaf.” He sure did. What we didn’t know until later that night was that mom had made two pans of meatloaf. My brother had polished off the sliver left in the first pan, along with the entire second pan. Impressive even by Page standards.
These big family meals were also extremely entertaining, absolute riots of brotherly jokes and ribbing and stories and multiple conversations all at once, each brother one upping the other, and all with our own unique personalities on full display.
My dad would jump into the conversations here and there but often seemed to be more of an observer of the show he’d helped build through his post-war baby booming. When he did talk, it was often with the intent to build our vocabularies. He’d say something like, “The traffic in Cambridge was quite heavy tonight, partly because potholes were so ubiquitous,” raising one eyebrow. I learned a lot of words this way. When my brothers went off to college one by one, our dinners became quieter and quieter until it was just me and my parents. I really missed our ravenous, boisterous big family cacophony.
I remembered those dinners this summer when I experienced again, in a whole new way, our big family in all its glory.
Both of my adult children and their families were visiting us at our place in Vermont for two weeks. We braced for impact, putting in two extra leaves in the dining room table and stocking up two refrigerators with plenty of food to feed the coming horde. Suddenly we had six adults and four grandchildren at the table, our familial army of Atilla the Hun. One night we had three racks of lamb, an enormous pot of rice, salads, steamed broccoli, rolls and butter, plus brownies and ice cream. Our conversations rocketed in arcs back and forth across the table like stones flung by trebuchets, the assault on the giant platter of lamb was highly successful, my grandchildren cheerfully gnawing the chops while chatting happily with their cousins. Our youngest granddaughter decided midway through the meal to dispense with using a fork for her rice, and instead grabbed handfuls of it to stuff in her mouth (parental protestations ensued, but not before wet rice blanketed the floor like new-fallen snow.)
I loved all of it. The whole loud glorious mess.
Not long after the kids headed home, there was a bruhaha about a certain candidate for Vice President who disparaged women for not having children. He referred to “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
What this attack dog said was of course purrrrfectly stupid on so many levels, but his statement was just one loud bark out of many now ringing out across the globe as politicians bemoan falling birth rates. China, which had a one child policy for decades, is now urging women to make babies. It’s a national crisis. They know they won’t be a global power in the future without actual humans to work in their factories or attend universities.
Many young people in the U.S. and Europe are also choosing to forgo parenthood, so the volume of the attack dog barks keeps rising higher.
The response from young couples is predictable. Hateful rhetoric in America, or dictates from communist regimes, is rightfully condemned or simply ignored. Young people are shutting off the noise and going about their lives, allocating money to car payments and rent versus diapers and daycare.
The hard reality is that our world has made it difficult for young people to have hope. They don’t want to bring children into a messed-up environment. They worry that our government is broken. They have a hard time juggling work and family, not to mention the high cost of living. As a result, on our present course, there will be a lot fewer families in the future adding extra leaves to their dining room tables.
What’s the solution? Step one is not judging anyone for choosing any particular lifestyle.
There is also another pathway, one that I’ve come to see in the course of writing the Good Grandpa book. I’ve interviewed many grandpas from all walks of life to hear their stories and learn their wisdom (including a Rabbi who has nearly forty grandkids. He said their family get-togethers are like being in Grand Central Station). In every interview, I’ve asked grandpas for their #1 most essential wisdom. Spoiler alert: what’s emerged is not one single concept across the spectrum of grandpas, but a constellation of North stars joined together by universal truths.
That said, I did hear one thing mentioned by quite a few men. Be kind.
These two simple words mean so much for our grown children. They don’t want to be told to have kids. But if we as grandparents are truly kind in every possible way, we help foster a family environment that brings hope to our troubled world. We can babysit grandkids, provide financial support, offer our wisdom. We can be there for them through good times and bad, let them know they are not alone in the incredibly arduous journey called parenthood. We’ve been there. We’ve done this. We’ve got this.
This is not a new idea, it’s an old one.
Many of the grandpas I interviewed spoke of wonderful childhoods where their grandparents lived with them or right next door. These days, that is all too rare. The Chinese and Indian grandpas I spoke with currently spend at least six months of each year living with their kids and helping care for their grandkids. We have a lot to learn from their cultures.
The other thing we can do as grandparents is to provide some historical context. Young people of child-bearing age may think our country is a wreck – there’s so much division and vitriol. Why would they want to bring a child into this? But those of us of a certain age were around when JFK, RFK and MLK were murdered. The Vietnam war was raging. There was rioting in the streets, student protestors getting shot on campus. Watergate was a shit-show. It was rough but life went on. The country went on, and maybe we learned a few things along the way.
Hateful language and governmental dictates will not fill our dining room tables with boisterous happy children. Kindness and love will.
As I write the Good Grandpa book I’m grouping my interviews with grandpas by topic—for example, three veterans from different branches of the military—then writing a chapter focused on…
The Dalai Lama
As I write the Good Grandpa book I’m grouping my interviews with grandpas by topic—for example, three veterans from different branches of the military—then writing a chapter focused on what I learn.
I ask a lot of questions and always conclude with what I call the Billy Crystal City Slickers question: What’s the #1 thing that matters?
I’ve found that when I compare and contrast these #1s they form fascinating patterns, all imbued with flavors of meaning that can only be derived from their careers and life experiences.
Most recently, I met with four grandpas who are religious leaders, a priest, imam and two rabbis (one orthodox, one reform). It sounds a bit like the old joke “A priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar….” But I can guarantee you that what these men told me was no joke. I was floored.
The last lap of my journey of religious wisdom discovery led me to Buddhism and a gentleman who is not actually a grandpa, at least not in a literal sense.
Lhamo Thondup was born on a straw mat in a cowshed in 1935, one of sixteen children in a humble farming family. In 1940, he was recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama and is currently the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. I wrote a letter to His Holiness in February of 2024 asking if he’d be available for a conversation. Four months later I received an email from his secretary saying the Dalai Lama, at 89, was devoting more time to rest and personal practice, and hence not available to meet. I wrote back to say that I understood and appreciated the response. However, after meeting with the four other religious leaders I felt I had given up on the Dalai Lama too easily. I wrote back and asked his secretary to ask him one question on my behalf, the #1 thing that mattered for grandchildren the world over.
The Dalai Lama replied, “Compassion is the key to the future well-being of our planet and fellow human beings.”
Excited to hear from His Holiness, I sought to better understand Buddhist teachings on compassion. Here’s how the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying defines compassion: “It is not simply a sense of sympathy or caring for the other person’s suffering, not simply a warmth of heart toward the person before you, or a sharp clarity of the recognition of their needs and pain, it is also a sustained sense and practical determination to do whatever is possible and necessary to help alleviate their suffering.”
In other words, it’s not enough to be a compassionate person, we actually have to take action to help others. There are all kinds of implications here for us as grandparents.
What comes to mind first is that after each school shooting there are the usual calls for “thoughts and prayers.” This is followed by politicians doing just about nothing. Then there’s another school shooting. And another. And another. This carnage is adding up on an almost unimaginable scale. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, childhood firearm fatalities increased by 87.1% over a 10-year period, rising to 2,590 deaths in 2021, beating out car accidents. Putting this number in perspective, a good-sized high school auditorium seats around 600 students. Imagine every single year over 4 auditoriums packed with children and teens die by gunfire.
Having genuine compassion requires us to solve this problem fast.
The question is, how? Passions run high on each side of the gun issue in America, with the NRA and other gun-rights advocates steadfastly supporting the Second Amendment, while parents and students clamor for much tighter restrictions on gun ownership. I suggest we meet in the middle on common ground. I have no doubt that all grandparents love their grandchildren. There is no red and blue color code on our national map when it comes to caring deeply about the safety of these kids. We urgently need a national conversation about what can be done to protect our grandchildren from harm, and this can’t be just one side talking. It’s going to take everybody and it has to be respectful.
One might ask, why should grandparents be the ones to make this happen? For starters, nobody else is, so why not?
Secondly, we often hear people say we’re living in a “new normal.” But those of us who are older remember a world without school shootings and we will not accept the normalization of horror. We have the time-tested experience and the moral authority required to convene this national conversation. And if any adults misbehave along the way, we’ll send them to a timeout chair.
All of the religious leaders I met with offered up their own unique perspectives, their own #1 thing. When I see their ideas in aggregate a larger picture emerges, a unifying umbrella of meaning. It’s not one pane of stained glass in a house of worship; there’s a full, rich image with light streaming through each section of color to paint a portrait I will never forget. I will be sharing this with you when the Good Grandpa book is published in 2025.
In the meantime, let’s listen to the Dalai Lama. It’s time to take action—compassionately—to stand up for the safety of all grandchildren.
Author’s note: As I write the Good Grandpa book, slated for publication in 2025 by Regalo Press, I’m sharing parts of the chapters on my blog. This post tells the…
Author’s note: As I write the Good Grandpa book, slated for publication in 2025 by Regalo Press, I’m sharing parts of the chapters on my blog. This post tells the story of Forever Letters and the power to share our love and wisdom with future generations.
In the early 12th century, Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, a translator and physician living in Southern France, picked up his pen to write a letter. He was likely an old man at the time, wise and perhaps frail, fully aware of the limited amount of sand remaining in his life’s hourglass. His words were not meant to be read by friends or business associates. It was a letter to be read in the future by his children and grandchildren:
“Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy bookcases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight.”
Judah’s letter was a form of ethical will, an ancient Jewish tradition with roots in the Bible. The practice of passing on accrued wisdom to nurture future generations, these written time-capsules, became more broadly used through the Middle Ages and in time was adopted by people of all faiths, continuing into our modern era.
Here, I must pause to ask my father’s favorite question: Why?
I’ve seen the answer written on the faces of the many grandpas I’ve recently interviewed. Not one single man I’ve spoken with (all of them Boomers like me), ever had a chance to know one of their grandpas. The actuarial tables show why this is the case. An American man born in 1900 had an average life expectancy of about 47 years.12 By the time their children had children most of them were no longer on the scene. An ethical will, often referred to as a Forever Letter, is an insurance policy against the loss of the precious ideas and values we pray our grandchildren will learn from us. We yearn for the chance to guide our grandchildren and leave a lasting legacy.
The history of the Forever Letter was brought home to me by a grandpa who has become a friend, Bob Halperin.
Bob reached out to me after reading my blog, and we met up at the local Grandpa Networking Center (Starbucks), and for subsequent fast hikes through ice-covered nature trails. Bob, I quickly learned, is a fascinating guy. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Brandeis, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and went on to lead a range of learning-focused organizations, notably serving as Director of the MIT Sloan Executive Education program. Today, Bob runs his own consulting practice that provides support groups for senior executives.
Bob and I have different educational backgrounds (his is better), but have the same haircut (bald), and share an interest in family stories. Bob, 68, speaks animatedly to convey ideas that spark out of his prodigious mind like intellectual popcorn. He’s also a writer, and a good one. While he didn’t know his grandfathers, one of them — Morris Jacobsohn—nevertheless left a big impression on him. “In 1950,” Bob said, “he wrote a letter to my oldest cousin, David, and I got to read it when I was 12.” Bob shared the letter with me. It begins…
I am addressing this letter to you. Being the oldest, the first of our grandchildren, you will reach maturity and fuller understanding before all your cousins. My request: please impart the contents of this letter to them, as they reach the age of full understanding.
Morris went on to describe his early childhood growing up impoverished in Palestine before it was Israel, his learning Hebrew at the age of three and a half, and studying the Talmud at age six. Morris poured his soul into sharing a structure for how his grandchildren could and should live:
In this outline, I hope to impart to you my personal code for living. I consider this code, not merely my ethical foundation, but the very cause of my humble attainments in life.
His lifelong love of scripture featured prominently in the formation of his personal code…
Studying the Bible in the original Hebrew I was trained to reach a broader understanding of “How and Why” of human actions and progress.
Morris finishes with words that spoke to Bob as if he were in the same room with him, because, in a way, he was:
One wishes to be remembered well. And in the hope that you will all so remember me, I conclude this letter with my final wishes; may you all share good opportunities and good fortune all through your lives.
Inspired by his grandfather’s example, Bob started writing letters to his two daughters when they were young, each letter designed to share his love and wisdom to mark a milestone in their lives such as graduating from high school or having their first child. When Bob’s first grandchild was born, he set up a special Gmail address from grandpa Bob. As of today, he’s written about forty letters to his three grandchildren, letters from Saba (Hebrew for grandfather). “They’re written in an adult way for them to read when they’re older,” Bob said, “and I’ve told my daughters ‘here’s the email address, here’s the password. I could die at any time, but they’re there.’”
Bob shared some of the letters with me, starting with this introduction…
This is the first of what I hope will be many emails I will send to you over the coming months and years! It may be many years before you can fully understand all of my messages. I will leave it to your parents to decide how and when to share with you.
And an email with a playful lesson on gratitude…
One small way that I try to remember to be grateful for even the smallest things I have is by saying what orthodox Jews call Asher Yatzar (or informally the “Peeing Prayer”).
Plus other emails addressing some of life’s most profound challenges….
The reality of life is that you will be blessed to have people in your life that you love and respect, and can’t imagine living without. And then through accident or illness, they will be taken away from you. I cannot shield you from these hard realities, but I can offer some perspective, having lived through my own losses.
I found Bob’s letters to be incredibly charming, thoughtful, loving and smart. How cool is it that a tradition that dates back to Biblical times is now in email form? While Saba’s letters were written to his grandchildren, they also spoke to me. The more I thought about Letters from Saba, the more I thought of my own family and our legacy.
I remembered a letter that my dad had written to my four older brothers a few years before I was born.
The first time I read it I was in my early twenties, when my dad was still with us, and I recall thinking it was lovely, but not life-altering. After talking with Bob I tracked down the letter and when I read it again—as a 64 year old grandpa—it resonated profoundly. My dad passed away in 2011 and reading this brought him back to me, vividly. But I also had to live longer to more fully appreciate the depth and beauty of his wisdom. Here is the letter.
July 2, 1956
To my Children:
When you get old enough to understand this letter fully, you will be as old as I am but I hope you will keep it, Calvin, so that you and the others may read it later on. Dear Calvin, Charles, Bill Jr. and John: There are times when I wished I knew what my father thought. It wasn’t that I wanted to lean on him for advice but it’s just that I always felt that he was a man that I would have liked to have known better. I expect to be around a long time after you have grown up but I want to talk to you now.
I’ve just finished flying across the country — to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles and Denver where I bought your mother an Aspenwood pin and some gold nuggets for you fellas — and then back to Boston. I know that you will all take this air trip some day and when you do, I know you will feel as I did that it is a tremendous and fascinating experience — where the grandeur of these United States perceived in a brief span of hours brings the meaning of unity home — unity of the land and the people and the weather and the soil. Nature shouts out to you, “This is what I am.” And our people say, “Fine, this is what you are. Here is what I can do to change you — to make you do something for me and my fellow Americans. Nature, I have the most powerful tool in the world – it’s the cooperation I get from my fellow citizens. They are my partners and if your soil grows plants and your mountains give minerals and if your waters carry boats and generate power and quench people’s thirst, it is because they are partners.”
I looked down, near sunset, on the tiny town of Delta surrounded by the vast desert of Utah. Off on the edge of town on a hill was a Mormon church. The people of the town had planted the hill with green grass and connected up lights on the lawn to illuminate the outside of the church. And with the sands of the desert mixing with the grass at the bottom of the hill, one of the greatest symbols of man’s unity shown brightly and gloriously in the dusk.
One of the things that will impress you when you fly across the country is the progress that people have made and the potential for the progress that has yet to come. You are all going to take part in that progress and your contributions to that progress will influence the lives of each of your other fellow Americans. Here is the challenge that comes with being born a United States citizen. You have more tools at your disposal here than anywhere in the world, — more knowledge, more education, more cooperating and effective people to work with, and a more responsive and better loved governmental system than the citizens of any other country in the world.
The challenge to each of you is all the greater because you have these things with which to work. What are some of the things that challenge you Calvin and you Charles and you Bill and you John. When you read this letter later on, you will be able to state them as well as I. 1. The successful completion of a world community where the same cooperative spirit that exists across the United States exists throughout the world. 2. The elimination of disease. 3. The pushing back of boundaries of scientific knowledge, both in the physical and the social fields, and the application of that knowledge for the good of everybody who breathes oxygen and those yet to breathe it (your children).
You will come to know that the greatest contribution that each of you shall make to this progress shall come by using your minds — by thinking. The greatest contributions to human welfare are not made by those who serve the people, but by those who determine how to serve. One of the most important contributors to the progress of the United States had this to say, “The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life. He not only misses the greatest pleasure but he cannot make the most of himself. All progress, all success, springs from thinking.” That was Thomas Edison.
When you grow older, read. Read Edison’s biography, his own notes, Ernest Dimnet’s “The Art of Thinking,” Osborn’s “Applied Imagination,” Leonardo DaVinci’s “Notebooks,” Newton’s “Principia,” Abraham Lincoln’s letters, Bertrand Russell’s “A History of Western Philosophy.” Read what you love to read. Great men will speak to you. You can get their thoughts for the price of a book.
Calvin and Charles and Bill and John, feel deeply the value and the purpose of the thing you are striving to create. Question, question, question! What is it good for? Who will benefit? How? When? Where? Why?
Each of you will come to feel that you have a great task before you. Be a fighter. Choose your weapons carefully and fight. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter. And remember, that the most powerful weapon in the world is clear thought.
With all my love to you boys,
Dad
What immediately struck me after reading this was my dad’s heartfelt portrayal of America. I could barely recognize his positive 1956 vision of our country versus the toxic divisive mess we live in today. How and why has America come to this juncture, and what can we do about it? How can our grandkids have any hope of becoming the next great generation if our country lacks a hopeful unifying vision for the future?
It wasn’t until Bob shared with me his #1 wisdom that an answer, a sliver of light, began to gleam in my darkness.
Bob smiled and said, “Rabbi Hillel was asked to summarize the Torah standing on one foot and what he says is some version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do onto you; the rest is commentary. Now, go study! So, my first answer to your question is, try to be a good listener. Because if you can be a good listener, the rest is commentary, right? If you can be a good listener, everything else is possible.”
When I read my dad’s letter—and the letters from Bob’s Saba—with this in mind, it bought home to me that conveying wisdom in our ethical wills is only the beginning. What matters is actually listening to the amazing things that are written, and then taking action. I had read my dad’s guidance to think and read, I had seen the list of books he told us to read, but I’d never read them.
Last week I went to the library and took out Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and Leonardo DaVinici’s Notebooks and I’m devouring them like a man who’s been starving in the wilderness.
I’m listening to Bob’s Saba’s advice, too, and will finally read the Bible (the whole thing versus the bits I read in Sunday School). And I’m saying the Peeing Prayer on a regular basis!
I’ve started conversations with my children about what it means to be American, and we are planning a family trip with all the grandkids to visit the Statue of Liberty. I want them to know that America can still be a beacon of hope to the world — if we get our act together. I’ll tell them that I have traveled to many countries, and they are great countries, but to this day I would still choose to live in the U.S., despite its many flaws, because we are the only country that has a dream — the American dream. Anything is possible here. Anything. But to Bob’s point, the full range of what’s possible depends on our ability to listen to each other.
We may not agree with the political views of others, but that doesn’t make them bad people.
We can find pleasure—and ultimately common ground—through thoughtful conversations and intelligent dissent, versus bloodthirsty cage matches on Facebook and cable news. In his letter to his grandsons Saba Morris wrote it better than I can: “Broad-mindedness, as against being fanatic or addicted to habits and ideas, leads on to the correct fashioning of one’s own life. Tolerance and patience, as added virtues, help to prevent much of bitterness and suffering, from disappointments and frictions with society and surroundings.”
The writing of letters meant to be read by future generations has one additional and critically important value. Simply writing down our thoughts helps to crystalize them today. For me, this entire book is a letter to my grandchildren, all the richer thanks to the wonderful ideas other Sabas have shared with me. If indeed the most powerful weapon in the world is clear thought, I hope the collective wisdom here will prove in time to be an arsenal that unleashes extraordinary potential. Question, question, question! If the answers don’t come to us right away, we’ll keep trying and never give up. We’ll fight like hell, because this dream is worth it.
Bob Halperin hiking in New Hampshire with his growing family. July 2022.
Author’s note: I’m grateful to Bob Halperin for reaching out to me and sharing his story. If you’re a grandpa who’s writing letters to your grandkids, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Wisdom is the best kind of heirloom.
One Christmas, a year when three of my brothers were in college, my parents were feeling especially strapped due to the simultaneous tuition payments. These days, most people would…
A lemonade stand staffed by very young entrepreneurs.
One Christmas, a year when three of my brothers were in college, my parents were feeling especially strapped due to the simultaneous tuition payments. These days, most people would take out college loans. Not mom and dad. We came downstairs Christmas morning to see the usual festively wrapped boxes under the tree.
When we opened the boxes, we found that each was empty except for a notecard with an IOU; mine read “IOU one Monopoly Board Game” signed, “Love, Mom & Dad.”
It turned out to be my favorite Christmas ever because I missed my older brothers and it was great to have them home for the day.
A few years after the IOU Christmas, my mom discovered that a large bag of brown rice she’d purchased a long time ago was crawling with worms. I begged her to throw it out, but she refused. “It’s perfectly good rice!” she said, handing me and my brothers tweezers to pick the wriggling worms out — a maddening task because the worms were the exact same color and size as a grain of brown rice.
My parents’ extreme frugality manifested itself throughout my childhood, including my Dad’s habit of draping used paper towels to dry in the kitchen so he could use them again later, mom making her own clothes at her Singer sewing machine, and my having to wear only hand-me-down shoes from my older brothers.
Growing up, my feet were often scrunched in shoes one or two sizes too small for me, resulting in permanent hammer toes.
All this despite the fact that my dad was a successful executive with Polaroid at a time when it was a high-flying company. We weren’t poor. We just acted that way. Having scraped by in the Great Depression, my parents saw waste as a cardinal sin and saving money as Godly in some agnostic Unitarian way. Within the mythology of Brokaw’s greatest generation, hard work and skimping pennies were valuable weapons in the arsenal of our economic battle for a better life.
Having lived like a middle-class sharecropper as a child, I swore my kids would indeed have a better life, even if I went broke making it happen.
When our daughter was in middle school, she begged us to go on a trip organized by People to People, a group founded by President Eisenhower to foster better relations with other countries. We ponied up over $3,000, which was a lot for us to spend back then. And the country Abigail visited in order to improve global relations? Australia.
My wife and I have been knuckleheads in many ways with our money (or lack thereof), but we did save on the road to retirement thanks to a recurring character in this book: my Gramp. I never inherited money from him. I did, however, take lessons from him that I’ve carried with me to the bank.
Gramp was an independent sales rep who traveled around New England selling retail displays. These were the early days of three-dimensional plastic signage that could be affixed to glass storefronts. The trunk of Gramp’s Rambler was always packed with these signs (for some reason the penguin smoking a cigarette display stuck in my mind). Gramp made decent money and saved what they could.
Once when talking with me about investing, Gramp grinned and said with a wink, “Oil stocks.”
All through the 1950s and beyond they socked money into stocks in the booming post-war energy sector. When they retired, they could afford to keep their place in Vermont and buy a nice condo in Tucson, Arizona.
Why do these stories matter? Earlier in the book I wrote about the first grandparents 30,000 years ago, the ones who began the tradition of teaching their kids and grandkids the everyday tips needed to survive and thrive. The grandparents could, for example, demonstrate the best way to plant seeds for successful crops — marking a shift towards agrarian versus nomadic communities. The wisdom imparted by these grandparents had a snowballing benefit as more and more techniques for living longer and more productive lives became broadly shared.
Thinking metaphorically, what are the seed planting tips that will help our grandkids become the greatest generation?
One area they need help with, desperately, is finance. The United States is considered a wealthy nation. Yet roughly half of Americans aged 65 and older get at least 50 percent of their family income from Social Security, and 25 percent of them get 90 percent. The Social Security Administration projects that the funds will run out by 2041. In that year my youngest granddaughter will be 19. How and when will she ever be able to retire?
Social Security’s woes wouldn’t be such a huge problem if people saved enough to sock away money in their retirement accounts, but they don’t. The average median retirement savings in the US is a meager $87,000. Saving for retirement, of course, is only one part of the financial challenge our grandkids face. About half of Americans have no emergency savings whatsoever. Zero.
Inspired by Gramp, I bought my first stocks when I was a junior in High School and have kept at it.
My wife and I never seemed to have much left over after paying for things like the kids’ braces—not to mention my daughter’s visit to the Great Barrier Reef to repair relations with the Australians—but we put away money each year in our 401k plans and that has grown over time. Following Gramp’s independent work example, I started my first company—a housecleaning business—when I was a High School Senior. Making money cleaning toilets seemed like magic, literally turning shit into gold, and I could set my own hours. After starting out as a copywriter with an ad agency in New York City after college I founded my own marketing agency and never looked back.
And now—shazam—all these grandkids are running around. The Fundamentals of Finance classes are not taught in their schools, not even at the best high schools.
Which means it’s up the parents and grandparents to get the job done. How, I wondered, could I as a grandpa help them learn from me as I learned from Gramp, but take it up a notch. Maybe, like a second language, entrepreneurship is best learned in childhood. While I was ruminating on this idea I happened to be visiting my daughter and her boys in Connecticut one day when they decided to set up a lemonade stand. The other grandpa in my grandsons’ lives, Jack Moore, was visiting as well. Jack, 75, headed up State Street Bank’s pension fund division before retiring in 2017.
“Great idea!” said Jack. “I’ll help.”
Everyone threw in ideas for getting started. Abigail and her husband, Ryan, said they could pick up some lemonade mix and cups at Costco. The boys would draw a sign. A card table was carried up from the basement.
I said to the boys, “Make sure you write down the cost of the lemonade and cups so you can keep track of your profits.”
“What?” they said in unison through mouths full of breakfast.
“It’s not about how much lemonade you sell,” I explained, “it’s about how much money you actually make per cup of lemonade after you take your cost of goods into consideration. The money you have after you subtract your expenses for lemonade and cups will equal your profit.”
The boys stared at me, chewing, digesting this concept thoughtfully.
“Ordinarily,” I went on, “you’d have to pay someone to sell the lemonade for you. That would be your cost of labor and you’d have to subtract that from your profit, but since you’ll be selling it yourselves you don’t have to pay anyone else.”
After some initial head scratching they were all over the idea of making a profit.
When Ryan returned from Costco with the supplies, they boys examined the receipt and did the math, then we discussed how much they should charge per cup of lemonade. How much would people reasonably want to spend per cup? If they paid $1, how much would be left of each dollar after the cost of the cup and the Lemonade mix was subtracted. Doing this real-world math was really fun for them.
Jack helped them set up their stand on the street and soon, like Tom Sawyer painting the fence, they were joined by other kids up their street. They were all hopping up and down with their sign to get cars to pull over – which they did, in droves. At one point, the kids flagged down a firetruck from the local fire station. Grinning and evidently thirsty firemen hung out with the kids, and my grandsons got to try on their helmets.
The kids got to wear the fireman’s helmet.
As the afternoon wore on, the dollar bills in their bucket grew like leafy green plants in a fast-motion time lapse film. Stepping back from it all, seeing them boisterous and laughing in the sun, I saw these boys and girls growing in fast-motion, too, spouting up before my eyes. They had one foot in childhood. The other in business school. They rocked it!
We grandpas played our role that day, but the ultimate lesson came courtesy of their dad.
Ryan encouraged them to set aside a percentage of their lemonade stand profits to donate to the local fire department. They loved this idea. I loved this idea. What a fantastic lesson: pull money out of thin air, make people happy with a refreshing roadside beverage, earn a video game versus begging for it, and allocate a percentage of profits to help others.
Capitalism is by no means perfect, but at its best it is the greatest engine of prosperity. The Captains of Industry of the 19th and 20th centuries built their vast summer “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island. Yet they also established philanthropic organizations that to this day benefit millions of people every year. Paul Newman famously allocated all of his Newman’s Own brand profits towards charity. “Give it all away!” he said.
To create large-scale positive change in their lifetimes, our grandkids need not become fabulously wealthy. They can start by simply making a decent living, regardless of the color of their skin or what town they grow up in, and along the way do the small things that matter — modest donations to their fire department or a local charity. The littlest gestures repeated by millions of young people will add up to the better world they will live in. We need to help put this power in their hands, one cup of profitable lemonade at a time.
If there is a heaven—and I strongly suspect there is—Gramp smiled and chuckled at the site of his great-grandsons jumping up and down with excitement at the lemonade stand, their whole lives ahead of them. “That’s just dandy,” he said, “wonderful!”
Comments Off on From The Boys in the Boat to Head of the Charles, with Fred Schoch
On August 14, 1936, rowing crews from six countries competed for the gold medal at the Olympic games in Berlin, Germany. Adolf Hitler was in the stands, cheering on his…
On August 14, 1936, rowing crews from six countries competed for the gold medal at the Olympic games in Berlin, Germany.
Adolf Hitler was in the stands, cheering on his team along with thousands crowding the stands at the Grunau Regatta Course. There were eight rowers and one coxswain per boat on the 2000-meter race, one oar per rower, with a photo finish that became legend as the American team took home the gold. The story of the team’s journey from their humble origins in Washington state to becoming heroes is brilliantly told by Daniel James Brown in his classic book, The Boys in the Boat. A move adaptation directed by George Clooney is coming out in December 2023.
But there is another story here that’s important to tell. One that spans generations that lived before 1936, and after, and will extend into the future.
The nine American rowers in the boat that day had an extra teammate, an alternate ready to replace anyone injured or ill prior to competition. His name was Delos “Dutch” Schoch (according to family lore, at one point when Dutch was filming the team, he was standing in the way of Hitler’s view and was summarily asked to move; when I learned this it made me wish a lot more men had stood in Hitler’s way in 1936).
Fred’s dad, Dutch Schoch.
After serving in the navy in WWII, Dutch became head rowing Coach at Princeton. The love of rowing was passed on to Dutch’s son, Fred Schoch, who’s played a leading role in building one of the great sports competitions in the world today, the Head of the Charles Regatta held yearly in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I’m talking with lots of grandpas these days as I conduct research for my book, The Good Grandpa Project, and when I found out Fred is a grandpa, I knew I had to meet up with him over coffee.
I wanted to know how his upbringing has guided him through life, and what lessons he’s learned. And I sought to ask him the question I’m asking of all grandpas: what is the #1 piece of wisdom that will help today’s kids become the next great generation?
The following are some highlights from our conversation:
How did your upbringing shape who you’ve become?
My dad was this heroic Hemingwayesque figure. Big as I am, burly. A revered coach. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke you really paid attention. I grew up in this kind of storybook town of Princeton [New Jersey], back in the 50s. Princeton was a sleepy little town of probably 30,000 people back then. But we used to go to the basketball games and see Bill Bradley play. I think I was shaped by not only my father, but the impressive young oarsmen at Princeton. As I got bigger, I got to go on trips with them and the kids would playfully throw me up in the luggage rack of the charter bus when we went to New Haven. I started as a coxswain when I was 10 years old and even steered one of my father’s crews in the 1960 Olympic Trials in Syracuse, New York. So, I grew up around them and could be a part of the workouts. And later, when I got big enough, I started rowing with them.
What do you remember about your dad?
One of the fondest memories I have of my dad was on wintery Sunday afternoons; we had an open Willy’s jeep, and we lived on 15 acres with lots of oak trees and we burned a fire all winter in our prerevolutionary farmhouse. We’d go deep back into the woods, and we’d cut fallen trees. We didn’t have to say a lot. But I was the splitter and he was running the heavy Sears and Roebuck chainsaw. And so, I learned how to split logs and actually wrote a poem to my son, Willard, about that experience, the father/son relationship. And I gave it to him for his birthday probably 10 years ago. Your relationship with your kids is so important. I took my youngest son to the airport recently and he said, “Dad, I’m really glad you gave me a ride because it’s more than that. It’s symbolic. I want you to know how important you are and how much I want you to be in my life.” Wow.
Did you have a chance to know your grandfathers?
Both of my grandfathers died in their 50s before I was born, and my dad died of a coronary at 56. There is a big hole in my history in terms of knowing my grandparents, and I want to pass on as much as I can to my grandchildren. You begin to think about the uncertainty of our own lives when you hit 70. As the saying goes, “The lights can go out at any time.” Having time together is important. That’s why I’ve just made a commitment to retire and start consulting part time.
When you think of a creating a lasting legacy for your grandkids, what things come to mind?
I think it’s important to pass on the basic building blocks of being a good human being and being honest. A tireless work ethic was something both my parents passed on to me. As a late bloomer I had struggles, you know, but I stuck with it and came out the other side academically, and even started my career as a secondary school English teacher. It seemed like it was never going to happen, but it did. While I didn’t know my grandfathers, I’m sure they had to work hard for what they achieved. I think a sense of humility is so important in life and to respect other people. I want to make sure they’re grounded. And I think that’s something that I can pass on that I received from my father.
What lessons are there in sports for our grandkids?
Rowing has given me so much because there’s no hiding in this grueling team sport. There’s no superstars. It’s like the total teamwork demonstrated by The Boys in the Boat. I have a recent example. An aspiring rower applying to colleges told me he had achieved a certain score on an indoor rowing machine used to test fitness, and I found out later he lied to me. It’s B.S. I mean, he lied to me but he’s lying to himself. He’s afraid. I believe in redemption, but he’s going to have to turn it around. A friend of mine is a coach at Marietta College who’s a philosophy major and he talks about an analogy of a lamp; the shadow outside of the lamp shade is where you have to go as an athlete, into that pain cave. When you’re competing it can really, really hurt. You have to you be able to peer into that darkness and not be afraid to go there. You have to prepare yourself mentally to embrace the unknown. It’s true in all sports. Some people take shortcuts. And some people refuse to take shortcuts — the successful ones. It’s about loyalty to your teammates and being honest with them and yourself.
What’s the #1 thing?
In life, you’re going to have so many ups and downs. Trust who you are and that you’re going to figure it out. It’s going to be okay. Just be resilient and keep marching forward. In grad school, I kept a piece of paper taped to my bulletin board with a saying from the German poet Goethe that read “work and despair not.” That pithy aphorism kept me going many late nights. I hope my grandchildren will absorb some of my wisdom and benefit from my experience.
My thoughts on Fred’s story: It brings to mind the idea that all of us are living history. From one generation to the next there is a bond that outlasts time, with evergreen lessons we can build on and shape into our own, and give again. And sometimes it’s the really simple things, like cutting wood in a forest—without talking—that says how much we love our children.
What are activities that you do with your grandkids that they will remember? Please post your comments to join the conversation.
A big part of my research for The Good Grandpa Project book entails meeting with grandpas of all kinds, from the famous to the unknown: Movie stars, African villagers,…
The author with the Minister of Silly Walks, John Cleese.
A big part of my research for The Good Grandpa Project book entails meeting with grandpas of all kinds, from the famous to the unknown: Movie stars, African villagers, Vermonters, New York Captains of Industry, Native Americans, and everyone else I can think of.
My goal is to gather and curate the stories and collective wisdom of grandpas so we can better nurture the next great generation.
I have a hunch that as I hear the stories of grandpas from different backgrounds and cultures that patterns will emerge. At present I can see glimpses of leaves through a nebulous white fog. The more people I meet, the more I’ll see trees, then forests, and the undulating roots beneath that connect everything into a greater vision.
It’s been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with taking a step. I’ve been asking myself, who can I meet with right now? Who has a unique perspective and stories to tell? Most important, who might be able to share the kind of wisdom that only emerges through a long and eventful life?
I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with John on several marketing projects years ago. On the first project, John was cast as several characters in my script for The Institute for Backup Trauma, a digital marketing project for a client launching a more reliable product for data backup. John played the head of the institute— Dr. Harold Twainweck—who catered to people who had lost their minds after losing their data. Being a ham myself, I made sure I wrote myself a cameo so I could appear briefly on camera with him.
In addition to playing the role of Twainweck, John gamely wore a dress, curly wig and tight red sweater to play the role of Hilda, an office manager.
The author with John Cleese (Hilda in The Institute for Backup Trauma).
John carried it well, and still managed to keep his mustache, lending him the appearance of an elderly cross-dresser. Ron DeSantis would have banned him from Disneyworld.
John has played many roles since the time he worked with me, including that of Nearly Headless Nick, one of the Hogwarts ghosts in Harry Potter. But these days John also plays the role of grandfather, presumably managing to keep his head on.
My friend Doug and I met up with John over lunch recently when he was in town to do a show. It turned out to be a sprawling and fascinating 2-hour lunch conversation. I’ve been a fan of John’s work since his early days with Monty Python, so it was a real treat to kick back, have a good meal and just talk. Of course, a few tidbit remembrances of those days were served, such as the crafting of the Parrot Sketch. Apparently, John and his main writing partner, the late great Graham Chapman, knew that the dead animal returned to the pet shop could not be a dog or cat because people are rather fond of them, but everyone hates parrots.
In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I was writing The Good Grandpa Project and hunting for people who could share the #1 thing, the most essential wisdom they believed would help the next generation.
John immediately jumped in. “It’s very simple,” he said, “because I’m reading about this all the time: It’s more important to find out what’s right than to know you’re right.”
When I pressed him to unpack this idea, he explained that for two hundred years everyone knew that Newton’s laws of physics were the last word, then Einstein came along with the theory of relativity and the old assumptions went out the window. Then quantum physics upended even Einstein’s brilliance. The mindset of assuming one knows the truth can be highly detrimental, whereas finding the answer—which can be a long, painful, fascinating, beautiful journey—is what really matters.
I love this idea and I’m glad I had a chance to talk with John in the early stages of my quest to better understand grandfatherhood. At no point can I truly believe I know the answer. The magic will be in traveling to find it.
John Cleese may be a comedic lion in winter—his 84-year-old legs long past the silly walks stage—but he’s still sharp as a tack and as funny as ever. His show the night of our lunch was billed as “An Evening with the Late John Cleese.” I laughed uproariously, gleefully, endlessly, a 64-year-old grandpa who felt 17 again.
Thank you, Mr. Cleese. I’m so happy you are not dead yet.
Dear Grandpa reader: would you like to share your essential wisdom? Do you have a story to tell that can help nurture the next great generation? Post a comment here. And feel free to email me at ted@goodgrandpa.com.
Comments Off on A Tale of Two Pilots (and the Generational Value of Longevity).
It was an early morning in July 1918, cloudy with a strong wind blowing as the American pilot flew his Nieuport 28 biplane over Chamery, a hamlet of Coulonges-en-Tardenois not…
It was an early morning in July 1918, cloudy with a strong wind blowing as the American pilot flew his Nieuport 28 biplane over Chamery, a hamlet of Coulonges-en-Tardenois not far from the front lines. His mission: Scout out and shoot down German reconnaissance. The fields of France were lush and green below, expanding out to the horizon where a glimmer of sun shone through the clouds, with dark trenches coiled through the fields like venomous snakes.
The roar of the planes behind him was his first sign of trouble.
He turned with alarm to see three Fokker Chasse planes bearing down on him from above. He yanked the stick hard to maneuver and climb into a more favorable fighting position, hearing the rattling bursts of machine gun fire growing nearer. It was too late. Within seconds, he was shot twice in the back of the head. His plane turned over on its back and plunged to Earth.
Back home on Long Island, the young man’s father—former President Theodore Roosevelt—mourned deeply from afar. Roosevelt put on a brave face for the press, but many believed he was so heartbroken he never recovered, and died barely a year after his favorite son, Quentin.
In the same French skies that year was another American pilot, Lieutenant Frederick L. Fish. The son of a Vermont State Supreme Court justice, Fred was tall, with short-cut sandy brown hair, a long face with an aquiline nose and clear grey-blue eyes. As he flew, Fred looked down at the battle below, a muddy moonscape of devastation, trenches separated by undulating piles and pits from shell blasts, shattered tree trunks pointing at twisted angles.
Fred pulled the trigger. But instead of firing a machine gun, he was snapping the shutter of a camera mounted to his plane, photographing enemy positions to provide intelligence to army headquarters. Fred was smart. Resourceful. Brave. Lucky as hell.
Fred was also my grandfather.
After the war, Fred Fish became a successful salesman, and in middle age became a Colonel in the Air Force in WWII to help organize allied resources for the D-Day landings.
I got to know Gramp very well, thankfully, when I was a teenager working for him to help manage and clean his rental cottages on our family farm along the shores of Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom. The five-mile-long lake was formed when a glacier bore down from the North, cutting a deep trough in the land and splitting one big mountain in two—Mt. Pisgah and Mt. Hor—with steep rock cliffs that slope down to the deep lake waters. The family’s rental cottages, all painted red with white trim, lined a sandy beach and hugged the banks of a brook that flowed from Westmore mountain.
Even then, in the 1970s, Gramp had a commanding presence.
Though bent with age, he was still tall at six foot two, and was quite comfortable giving orders and seeing that they were obeyed without question. He was usually dressed head to toe in khaki, including a cap, and would fix me with his clear eyes and tell me to do this (empty buckets of sewage out of a septic well) or that (rake the beach). Or the Sisyphean task of cleaning the cottages in-between rentals using an upright vacuum that had terrible suction. “You missed a spot!”
I can picture him now vividly as he kicked back at the end of a long day, drinking a Miller High Life in the yard behind the Farmhouse. “Teddy,” he’d say, “there’s no substitute for hard work.”
Gramp lived into his mid-eighties, always active and full of life. He sang hymns in Church, delighting everyone with his vibrant baritone voice. Often down at the beach he’d break into yet another chorus of his favorite song, The Foggy Foggy Dew.
Why does the fact that Gramp survived two wars and lived a long life matter? Why did it matter to him, and—for the purposes of this story—why did it matter to me, my brothers and cousins? Just as important, why did his very nature as a grandfather matter to us, complete with his many tales of adventure and shared wisdom?
It turns out it matters a lot. Not just in the case of my Gramp, but for all grandpas and our loved ones here in America and around the world. The reasons are rooted in the history of humanity itself.
Early humans lived lives that Thomas Hobbes best described as “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Fossil records indicate that our very earliest ancestors 30,000 years ago lived to about the age of 30. Which meant very few lived long enough to become grandparents. Scientists aren’t sure why Upper Paleolithic Europeans started to live longer into relatively old age, but they surmise that the changes brought about by this longevity had a profound impact on evolution.
When more grandparents came on the scene, things started to change for the better.
“Grandparents,” an article in Scientific American informs us, “contribute economic and social resources to their descendants, increasing both the number of offspring their children can have and the survivorship of their grandchildren.” In other words, having grandpa and grandma hanging out in the cave meant they were there to help raise the kids and dole out essential knowledge. Grandparents could teach, from experience, how to plant seeds to get the best crops. Or a thousand other things that helped the family survive and thrive.
Gramp’s habit of telling stories ladled with wisdom is likely a key reason why several of my four older brothers survived into adulthood.
Here’s one story out of many that shows how Gramp made a difference.
It was Easter, 1969, a lovely spring day in Lexington, Massachusetts, when my family—mom, dad and brothers—loaded into the station wagon and headed over to my grandparents’ house across town for the traditional late afternoon feast of ham, potatoes, peas, pies and handfuls of chocolate Easter eggs.
I was 10 at the time, while my eldest brother, Calvin, was twenty-one, and Charlie, nineteen. Both draft age for Vietnam. Photos taken that day seem inked in pastel hues, all of us in jackets and ties, young and pink-faced.
The war was not far away. Every night we watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news and there was always a tally of the men who had died in Vietnam. My parents were very much against the war and were not shy about saying so. Dad was no stranger to war, having been divebombed by kamikazes at the battle of Okinawa. He often said war was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen, and Vietnam only confirmed his beliefs. He did his part to serve his country but suffered lifelong PTSD. I once witnessed my mom give him food in a red dish, and when he saw the color red he clenched his teeth and screamed, “Blood!”
Having seen dad’s post-war stress up close, Calvin and Charlie were nervous about the draft; there was a lot of nail biting going on.
Calvin was still a bit on the fence, though, about whether he’d go to Vietnam if his draft number came up. He’d been in ROTC and was better prepared than most of his peers to fight. Both my parents hated Richard Nixon. My Gramp and Gram, however, were lifelong Republicans through and through. Even if Nixon wasn’t perfect, they would always support whoever led the Grand Old Party.
After we’d gorged ourselves on Gram’s multi-course dinner, we retired to the living room. Somehow the topic of Vietnam came up. My grandparents never said a word about Vietnam, which is why what Gramp said that day was so astonishing.
Gramp held court in his chair, center stage, while we young men sat nearby in respectful silence. “Well, boys,” Gramp said, “when I went to war the first time, in World War I, they told us it was the war to end all wars. Then came World War II don’t you know, and we had to go back and fight another one. Then there was Korea. And now there’s Vietnam.”
Here Gramp gestured one long hand in the air for emphasis, “All I can tell you is, it’s always the old men who start wars, and it’s the young men who are sent off to fight them.”
None of us said a word in response, but heads nodded. We knew exactly what Gramp’s opinion of Vietnam was without him ever having to be explicit or betray his Republican principles. None of my brothers chose to fight in Vietnam.
Only a man who’d flown above the trenches in France, then returned to Europe to fight again not too long after, and only a man who loved his grandsons more than anything, had the moral credence, love and wisdom required to tell us what he did. My brothers and I lived on to have children and grandchildren of our own.
What are lessons that I and other grandparents can impart to help nourish the next great generation? What role does wisdom play in survival and happiness?
In future posts, I’ll offer up some ideas. Not only mine, but gems of wisdom I’ve heard from other grandparents. If you have suggestions or would like to write a guest post, drop me a line at teddypage@gmail.com.
In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful book, The Code Breaker, he describes the life and work of Jennifer Doudna, a scientist credited with the creation of CRISPR gene editing technology. If you…
In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful book, The Code Breaker, he describes the life and work of Jennifer Doudna, a scientist credited with the creation of CRISPR gene editing technology.
If you or a loved one benefited from the COVID vaccine developed at astonishing speed, you can thank Jennifer. CRISPR allowed scientists to rapidly edit the RNA used in the vaccine, and millions of lives were saved in the process.
What really struck me about Doudna’s story, however, was how this Nobel-winning scientist was strongly discouraged from pursuing a career in science. Her high school guidance counselor advised her that “science is for men.” Fortunately for Doudna—and all of us—she didn’t listen.
As a grandfather I think of Doudna when I see my daughter and granddaughters. As grandparents, how can we help them live in a world where nobody, ever, under any circumstances, tries to confine them within boundaries fabricated by men?
I grew up in a traditional male dominated household.
My dad, a chemical engineer and executive with Polaroid, walked in the door at 6:30 pm every weeknight with the expectation that mom would have dinner on the table for all the males: my dad, me and four older brothers. And she did. These days people would say she was a “stay at home mom.” In the 1960s that’s just the way it was.
To my mom, having four sons in a row was a blessing and a curse. She loved us all but really longed to have at least one girl in the family mix. Just one daughter to make dresses for, or perhaps commiserate with about the male-run world. After giving birth to my older brothers mom tried one last time to have a girl, but then I was born and those hopes were dashed. She gave up and bought a girl Labrador Retriever puppy and tied a pink ribbon around its neck. Her name was Holly (apparently this would have been my name if I’d been a girl). To get the full story of Holly and the puppies she would eventually give birth to, you can read my book, The Willoughby Chronicles.
You might wonder, how did a busy exec like my dad commuting home in heavy traffic from Cambridge, Massachusetts, manage to walk in exactly at 6:30 each night?
Because he always stopped at the library, then left there at 6:25 to get to our house on time for dinner. He could have arrived some days at 6 or earlier and helped out, but somehow that thought didn’t enter his mind.
My mom was a smart, creative woman. Her frustration with her lot grew as the 70s and the womens’ rights movement progressed. I often heard her say, wistfully, that she could have done something with her life. In truth, raising five of us—each one gigantic and constantly ravenous—was certainly the most demanding job in the Page household. There was no leisurely stopping off at the library for mom. The vats of baked ziti needed to be cooked for the boys. Or a million other thankless tasks completed.
She did stage some occasional token protests, like the time she complained that my dad didn’t always eat the food she had carefully prepared. “That really hurts my feelings,” she said.
Dad apologized and swore in the future he’d always eat her meals. A few days later she served him a sandwich made with cat food (Kal Kan, no less, a slimy odiferous mush). I’m not entirely sure he realized he was eating cat food. It’s possible. In any case he downed the whole sandwich and thanked her for it.
The present and future I want for my daughter and grand girls is one where all career choices are open, all pay is equal, and no high school guidance counselor will ever seek to enforce limits. If women choose to pursue lives where they are raising kids full time, then that direction must be fully respected as well. “Stay at home mom” should never be a pejorative expression.
So, how can we foster the best possible future? Perhaps it starts with how we play with the kids, because the path towards being something starts with imagining it.
We can have bright plastic kitchen play sets with dishes that both the girls and boys can play with. But have a bright plastic science lab right beside it. During playtime, we could ask a boy or girl if they want to make some pasta for dinner. And we can ask if they’d like to edit genes to invent a new vaccine to save humanity. Let them choose their play, just as they choose the future they will inhabit.
Jennifer Doudna was born with many gifts. She’s brilliant, but also lucky to have a forceful personality that helped her push back against her guidance counselor. Not every kid will have this. We have to work harder, wherever we can, to make career and life paths fully accessible to all.
What are ways you can think of to help our kids help their kids, the next great generation, become who they were meant to be? Post a comment to join the conversation.
Comments Off on It’s Time for the “Green New Deal”
When I saw this picture of me an my granddaughter, Roen, before a lush living wall of ferns I couldn’t help but think of climate change and the world she…
When I saw this picture of me an my granddaughter, Roen, before a lush living wall of ferns I couldn’t help but think of climate change and the world she will live in. I was born in 1959 and Roen was born in 2018. This span of time has not been good for the environment. Scientists have been warming us about climate change for decades, yet no significant progress has been made to stop it. In the same year of Roe’s birth, 13 US Federal agencies issued a report with stark warnings on the environmental and economic impact of climate change.
What are we grandparents going to do about it?
Some leaders are pushing for a “Green New Deal” that will rapidly shift our economy away from the use of fossil fuels, with a corresponding increase in our use of clean energy.
Let’s do this!
I don’t care what political party anybody belongs to. This should not be about politics. The question before us is as simple as this. Do we want our grandchildren to live in a world of increasingly extreme weather? A world where it will become so incredibly hot or cold that survival is at best a challenge, and at worst impossible?
I was just a boy when John F. Kennedy challenged America to go to the moon. To my parent’s generation, it seemed impossible. But the very audacity of the challenge inspired them to go for it.
We must once again do the impossible. Our grandchildren’s lives depend on it.
