Nurturing the Next Great Generation

Tag: Good Grandpa book

STORIES

Lighting One Candle

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When I was growing up, our Christmas Eve tradition started with going to church. For us, that meant the First Parish Unitarian church located on the town green of our…

When I was growing up, our Christmas Eve tradition started with going to church.

For us, that meant the First Parish Unitarian church located on the town green of our hometown in Lexington, Massachusetts. My mom, who bore some resemblance to Julia Child in size and manner, was no fan of organized religion—she described Christian dogma as “a bunch of whooey,” but First Parish offered an openness to all faiths, whether they were whooey or not. And when it came to Christmas Eve, there was no place better on Earth to get into the spirit of the holiday.

We’d huddle into our pew, my parents and four older brothers, each holding an unlit candle in the dimly-lit nave.

After singing a few carols, the minister would welcome us to the yearly candle lighting ceremony. He’d speak to the meaning of light, its warm beauty, its spiritual nature, and always conclude by saying, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Then, as we sang O Holy Night, the lighting of the candles commenced, one pew at a time, each person lighting the candle of the person next to them, and within minutes a whole constellation of candles illuminated our church — and yes, even our not very religious hearts.

I thought of those Christmas eve candle lightings a lot this year as we got together with our family — including all five grandchildren.

Gathering in one house these days is a miracle all by itself (last year was a ‘COVID Christmas,’ not to mention my son-in-law’s Norovirus). This Christmas was blessedly illness-free. We all had so much fun together, opening presents, playing games, going for walks, having raucous family dinners as the grandkids talked up a blizzard with their cousins.

The joy we experienced occurred during what I would charitably call a massive shit-storm: immigrant children across America being ripped from their parents arms, the tragic murder of Rob Reiner and his wife followed immediately by the President disparaging the couple on Truth Social, the mass-shooting of Jews in Australia, the mass-shooting of students at Brown University, War in Ukraine, and on and on and on. These are dark times indeed. And there we were, suddenly, all together in our living room by the Christmas tree.

The room was crowded, the grandkids boisterous and laughing, including baby Blythe (the youngest) taking her first steps as we all cheered her on. That room was full of so much light. So much love. It was our candle in the darkness.

As I look to the New Year, my goal is to carry that light inside me at all times, no matter what. But beyond that, I hope to spread more light through my actions and those of our larger family. Instead of buying multiple presents for each of our grown children and their spouses, my wife and I made donations to charities tailored to their interests (my daughter, who adores animals, was honored with a donation to an animal shelter).

Taking a page from the grandpa veterans I profiled in my Good Grandpa book, I plan to do a better job of serving the community as an extension of our family. I’m starting by offering a creative memoir writing seminar for veterans so they can learn how to tell their life stories. It’s not a heavy lift on my part (I still work full time). And not a whole church full of candles by any means. Just one. But it beats doom scrolling in the dark any day of the week.

IF YOU ARE PART OF A VETERANS GROUP AND WOULD BE INTERESTED IN MY FREE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP, YOU CAN REACH ME HERE: TED (AT SYMBOL) GOODGRANDPA.COM

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STORIES

The Power of Moral Imperatives

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In the course of writing the Good Grandpa book I had wonderful conversations with many grandpas, including Reggie Williams, a retired NFL pro who’d played with the Cincinnati Bengals in…

In the course of writing the Good Grandpa book I had wonderful conversations with many grandpas, including Reggie Williams, a retired NFL pro who’d played with the Cincinnati Bengals in two superbowls.

I learned that early in his life, when he was starting out on the football team at Dartmouth college, several of his teammates walked out of the locker room because he was Black. But Reggie had been taught by his father to use that adversity as his fuel to outperform others on the playing field. And that’s exactly what he did. But Reggie didn’t stop there. When I asked him for an example of a time he burned that fuel to win, he told me something remarkable (I won’t tell you the whole story now because I don’t want to ruin the book for you, but here it is in brief — with a new twist that happened just this week).

The instance he cited did not involve football at all.

Towards the end of his playing career, Reggie served as a councilman with the city of Cincinnati, where he led an initiative to divest the city’s pension from South Africa’s Apartheid regime. Reggie didn’t fully understand the impact of this action until later. After the Apartheid regime had crumbled, Reggie got a call from Bishop Desmond Tutu — a call to thank him personally — because Cincinnati’s divestiture had a snowball effect globally. It was, according to Tutu, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Bishop Desmond Tutu, left, with NFL star Reggie Williams.

Given what’s going on in our world today (political turmoil as just one example) Reggie urged me to write about the need for grandparents to promote moral imperatives in society. I took that advice to heart.

Just this week, I heard news that showed the enduring power of moral imperatives.

Someone at South Africa History Online, an organization that archives and shares the official history of the country, had heard about Reggie’s work to end Apartheid, but not the full story. Nor was the story included in the country’s history books. That is about to change. A chapter excerpt from Good Grandpa that features Reggie’s role in ending Apartheid will soon be archived and shared widely on the South Africa History Online site, reaching about 6 million readers each year.

South Africa History Online is the most comprehensive resource on South African history and culture.

 

Future generations of South Africans will know the full story of an American football player who helped liberate them from oppression.

It’s an honor to help tell Reggie’s story, but beyond that I’m floored to see just how powerful and enduring the idea of moral imperatives is. Being kind, compassionate and fearless—all grounded with a moral compass—provides us with a map for taking action in a troubled world. As grandparents, we have an opportunity to share this kind of wisdom with our families and communities. This is how we can make a lasting difference.

Author’s note: If you’d like to share your story about moral imperatives, please post a comment. Or reach out to me via the email in the contact section of the blog.  

 

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Open the curtain. The Good Grandpa book cover design is here!

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I’m thrilled to announce that the cover my new book—Good Grandpa: Stories from the heart of grandfatherhood—has been finalized. The design is in the form of a photo mosaic, like…

I’m thrilled to announce that the cover my new book—Good Grandpa: Stories from the heart of grandfatherhood—has been finalized.

The cover for Good Grandpa, designed by Kris Collins.

The design is in the form of a photo mosaic, like a family album, showing some of the wide range of grandfathers I interviewed in the course of writing the book, including famed newsman Tom Brokaw. The book will be published in September 2025, timed for Grandparents Day, by Regalo Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster.

Here’s a video that tells the story of the book (produced by the great Doug Feinburg).

I am deeply grateful to all the grandfathers who took the time to talk with me. This included grandfather leaders of the world’s major religions, military veterans, pro athletes and many more. Their wonderful stories and wisdom formed an unforgettable tapestry that I hope will be seen by many grandparents in the US and around the world.

I also believe the book will be of value to young people, especially young parents.

Time and again the grandfathers I spoke with said, “I’m going to tell you something I wish I’d known 40 years ago.” I think it’s really important for people in their 20s and 30s to learn these things NOW so they can live a better life and help us create a better world. In a time when there is a lot of darkness and hate, the book will provide some welcome rays of hope.

Be sure to sign up for the Good Grandpa newsletter so you can find out when the book is available for pre-order this spring. This is fun!

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BUCKET O' WISDOM

Timeless Wisdom from a Six-Year-Old

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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.

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