Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa will always be my hero. I can’t tell you all the reasons why – I can’t. But I will try.

He is someone I want to be: qualities of hard work, children, farm, honesty, love, determination; serving his country at great sacrifice, going to college and entering the ministry with a young family, returning to roots to live and care and work hard and honest for a lifetime.

It is hard to grasp, this hero thing. If I were to say this to him he would have sort of laughed and mumbled something about life and failures…or more likely, if I told him he was my hero he would have responded silently, moving on as soon as he could.

There was a quiet love in this man. I of course never talked to him about marriage and his love for Grandma. But I have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion – a pretty sure conviction – that they loved each other with passion and tenderness. And their love grew and grew, learning to bear faults and failures with grace and truth and kindness. They loved each other with intensity and that love gave them 8 children and so many grandchildren and greats. It was really there, I think – imperceptible almost – this amazing, foundational, real love. He would have been pained at his failings in showing love, but he loved nonetheless. I want to be like him. He will always be a hero to me.

He was a hero from the time I saw him running past the bleachers to play in a stars and stiffs game at MWC. He would have been about 50. He got in there and mixed it up with those young guys and this wide-eyed 5 year-old loved every minute.

He was a hero from the time he let me into the mix of uncles doing Thanksgiving woodcutting. I was eager to help – too eager I am sure – but he let me help and I loved it so much. You just can’t know how much I loved it. I loved my Grandpa – he will always be my hero.

He will always be a hero for the way I used to hear him in the mornings, in and out, doing chores while Grandma fixed breakfast. I would roll over and go back to sleep and when I woke up he was gone, hard at work on some project somewhere.

He will always be my hero for the breakfasts Jane and I had with him and Grandma in later years. So much love and interest, and the timeless habit of reading from a devotional book when we were done eating. That voice will always be in my mind, kind of deep and gentle, going somewhere but not in a hurry, interested in hearing and sharing the things of God. Grandpa will always be my hero because he really worked at this thing of loving God in the midst of all that life demands. He seemed to feel his shortcomings painfully but he always got up and kept going.

And go he did. Who could stop this man? Grandma couldn’t, it seems. Of course, amazing woman that she was, I’m sure she kept him going and…if she wanted him to stop, really wanted him to, I bet he stopped on a dime and did her bidding, with love and gladness.

But…he seemed pretty hard to stop! I always loved and laughed at his determination to work beyond what other folks call retirement. I think he was going on 90 before he really retired. When he visited our home in 2004 I was doing a roof job on the campus where we lived. At 86 or so he insisted on getting up on the roof with me – in dress shoes. He had forgotten his work shoes but he wasn’t going to miss the action. He stood at the peak and just sort of took it in as I worked for awhile. Kind of a mystery going on in those eyes, the insatiable longing to be busy, to get things done, the yearning for and loving of life that makes him a hero to all of us.

Grandpa was a real man, a hero for a thousand reasons. Rugged and sacrificial WWII service, hard work in whatever it took to raise a family, love and determined devotion to God that expressed itself in countless ways, a family heritage that, to me, is rich beyond words.

This is my Grandpa, my hero. I want to be like him, I really do, and I will always count my self incredibly blessed that Glenn Hoerner was my Grandpa.