Tell me about your grandparents

[Liberty Belle]

53. Cowboys, Indians, Irish immigrants and Holocaust victims are all in my family tree.

My Mom's father was a cowboy on the Chisolm trail as a young man. His mother, my great-grandmother, was part Cherokee Indian. His father,my great-grandfather, was descended from Patrick Henry, where I get my rabble rousing genes. Grandpa's parents were also pioneers who came by wagon train from Tenessee to Texas, with the older children walking all that way alongside the covered wagon.Grandpa was born in a barn in Texas while their house was being built.

He married my grandmother when she was 17 and he was 27; it was love at first sight. As a schoolgirl she saw him driving cattle past the school yard; their eyes met and she smiled at him. She had long red hair, her Irish roots, and when they met at a party a few years later they remembered each other and married soon after. They had a farm until they lost it in the Depression My grandfather was dirt poor but a man of great integrity. When the KKK tried to coerce him to join, he refused -- telling me any organization in which a man must hide his face in shame is not a group he'd ever be part of. He feared they might return and burn down their farm, but thankfully that didn't happen. He's inspired me to always make the right choice, even if it's the hard choice. After losing the farm they bought a place in town with a peach orchard and Grandpa worked loading freight at a railroad yard, until a sack of grain fell and crippled his back; he could walk but never let anything heavy again. He also played the fiddle at square dances.

Grandma's grandfather came from Ireland as a young man whose father sent him here to avoid being forced into the military; he became a boxer to earn his living in America.Grandma maintained a strong spirit and wonderful sense of humor her whole life despite an abusive childhood. Her mother died in childbirth with triplets when Grandma was very little. Her father remarried a woman who beat my grandmother but she was also a rebel at heart - she once bobbed her hair like the flappers in the 20s, knowing she would be beaten for defying her stepmother's orders. When her father and stepmother passed on, grandma's brother was sent to live at an orphan's home.

Grandma had a happy marriage until Grandpa died of a heart attack in the doctor's waiting room at age 65. Grandma was brokenhearted--and broke. She went to work as a maid for a while. Yet she was always generous and loving. She taught me to bake apple and apricot pies, and to smile and laugh even when there are hardships. She lived to 93, and was a great inspiration to me. Interestingly, she gave my mother an Emerald ring with Irish clasped hands at age 16; Mom gave it to me when I was 16. It got lost in gym class in high school and I was sick about it; i searched through my locker that I found unlocked but it was gone -- until the day after Grandma died, when I brushed against clothes in my closet and heard something fall to the ground There was her ring! Grandma always called me her angel, and I guess her angel sent it to me from heaven.

They had two children, Mom and her sister, Winnie, who was also giving and generous person. Mom was an artist and one of the first women mechanical draftsman at Convair, where she met my Dad. With her artist's eye, she taught me to see the beauty in all things. She's now 90, in a nursing home, but still filling me in on the family history.

My Dad's parents were Jews who immigrated here from Austria-Hungary. They met in American and found out they were from the same hometown. Grandpa ran a scrap metal yard in Detroit. Their parents died in one of Hitler's concentration camps, as did most of their other relatives except my Grandmother's sister who escaped to Argentina and my grandfather's brother who was just 11 when soldiers burned his village; a soldier took pity on him and hid him in a wagon to escape. He walked to the seacoast and stowed away aboard a ship to come to America. My grandparents spent years searching for other relatives, and there was always a a sadness about them after learning how many had perished. From them, I learned the pain that hate can cause.

Dad had two brothers; one fought with Patton in World War II but was never the same after; shell-shocked and exposed to chemical weapons, he was traumatized and never married. Dad's brother was a well-known builder. Dad was an engineer and though Jewish, worked alongside German rocket scientists at an Army base in Huntsville, Alabama to help launch the US space program. He became known as Mr Atlas at General Dynamics later on, helping design the flight paths for all of the Atlas, Gemini and Mercury flights as well as the unmanned Apollo missions.

Dad taught me patience. I remember him bringing home notebooks of calculations he did by hand -- amazing that we sent rockets into orbit with astronauts aboard this way!