Every year since starting my blog, I've honored my grandpa with a blog post in February.
My Grandpa Max.
My Grandpa Max.
What does Black History Month mean to me? It's a kind of Memorial Month dedicated to those of African-American descent, as well as "black" people from other parts of the world.Because not all black people are African-American and not all African-Americans are black!
It's a time to reflect on the positive contributions of a race that has been oppressed, repressed, and struggled to rise above it all, to be treated as equal human beings created by the one true God.
I could list many famous people from history,and even from the present, who have made significant contributions in the world and helped shape it. But, I'm gonna focus on my grandpa, Max Johnson.
My Grandpa has been, and probably will be, the most significant black man in my life.
My dad's dad was a ward of the state for many years before being "adopted" by several different families throughout his childhood. I put adopted in quotes, because it was bordering on being an indentured servant.
I had the privilege to read many reports from his childhood from orphanage case workers that would routinely check up on him in each new foster home.
They concluded he was a well-behaved, clean, polite, yet nappy-headed negro, who was allowed to sit at the dinner table with the white children. How strange to read some of that, considering it was around 1914, not 1814.
I also got to read some heartbreaking letters he wrote as a 10 year old pleading with the orphanage case workers to allow him to stay with a particular family whom he loved.
My Grandpa Max grew up to enlist and serve in the U.S. Army, be in the Korean War, learn to play the guitar and be in several bands. The Grand Ole Opry even asked him to join their association, but he declined. He had a beautiful and smooth deep singing voice, a cross between Ray Charles and Johnny Cash.
He had many jobs as a farm hand, a semi-pro wrestler, and eventually started his own successful lumberjack business. I still have some of the lumberjack company stationary with the Johnson and Nagle letterhead!
My grandpa was not perfect by any means. He had a very distant relationship with his 5 children, one of whom is my dad. But, the man I knew was very different from the man his children knew. My uncle Bill even said to me one time, "Your grandpa and my dad are not the same person." I knew what he meant.
I wish he could have had the relationship with his children that he had with me.
My grandpa was loving, attentive, and involved. For many of my early years we lived with him and my grandma. He taught me how to tap trees for maple sap, fish, canoe, "hunt" for night crawlers, grow a thriving garden, build an in ground smoker to smoke fish,along with many other things.
I was often his little white shadow!! I loved being with my grandpa and often called him Daddy.
I have so many wonderful memories of my Grandpa that I could dedicate several blog posts to him. And although there are MANY pictures of me in my preschool and adolescent years, there are few of him and I together, because he was taking the majority of the pictures.
He developed Alzheimer's disease and passed away in 1996. I still miss him and will always be grateful of the legacy of determination and ingenuity he left to the world.
