Lessons we learned from Grandpa

The phrase “teachable moment” comes to mind, but can an elderly man with Alzheimer’s really teach his children and grandchildren? That’s the question we’ll explore today.

Willis came to live with us in 2006 upon the death of his wife. He brought with him his clothes, his cat and the start of dementia…something that would slowly progress over the remaining eight years of his life.

Grandpa with his grandsons Scott and Derek in 2011. 

Despite his disease, the World War II veteran could still light up the room and his love for his family knew no bounds. He went by different names. To me he was dad but to our sons, he was Grandpa. 

He taught us that you are never too old to help someone. It was a cold winter’s afternoon and after eating a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup for lunch, he dressed warm and went for his daily two-block walk. Even though he had Alzheimer’s, we never worried about him wandering off. He had made this trek so many times, he could do it without much thought. And our neighbors along the two block walk always kept an eye out for Grandpa.

On this particular day, we were surprised when he brought back an elderly gal with him. She was our neighbor – Maggie. She didn’t have her teeth in and she wasn’t wearing a coat. Maggie also suffered from dementia. So once she got in our house and warmed up, she told us that she had gone outside for a minute and locked herself out of her home. Our hero came to her rescue and brought her to our house. Since we knew Maggie’s daughter, we called her and she came over to unlock the door…only to find that the door wasn’t locked in the first place.

Thus is the life of living with people who suffer from memory loss. But as Maggie bundled up in a coat to leave our house with her daughter, Grandpa made one of his pronouncements that will stand the test of time, “Women have a harder time growing old than men do.”

Seriously, I thought. Both of you have Alzheimer’s. Both of you require children to survive, but dad spoke so eloquently, it just seemed like the words should be carved in stone. But I think what he really meant was, you are never too old to help someone in need, and in this case he did.

A second lesson he taught us – you don’t need to know their names to be proud of your family. As dad approached his 90^th birthday, the only person whose name he could remember was his grandson’s Scott. All the rest of us were something else. I was forever introduced to him as “this is my son.” My wife was the “woman in the kitchen.” This phrase was only necessary when the woman in the kitchen wasn’t in the kitchen about 15 minutes before Grandpa expected to eat….which was 7 a.m., noon and 6 p.m.

He would walk by the kitchen and if it was empty, he would ask whoever was around, “Where’s the woman in the kitchen?” Meals were important to dad, but so was family. He might not know your name, but he knew if you were a relative. If he did, he would say, “you belong to me.”

That was high praise from someone who couldn’t remember what he ate for breakfast, but he could remember that someone passing through town from Idaho to Maine “belonged to me.”

The third thing dad taught us was that an honest answer could also be mistaken as a person with an amazing wit.

If you didn’t know he had Alzheimer’s, and a lot of people didn’t, he could fool you easy enough. He was generally quiet, but he would say just enough to make an impact. For instance, one night we were attending a dinner and dad was introduced to the evening speaker. The guest of honor asked dad, “What did you do before you retired?”

Without a pause, dad said, “It’s been so long ago, I forgot.” The whole room erupted in laughter.  What a clever response, they thought. But if the truth was known, he had answered the question truthfully. The ever-present twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face made the audience believe that he was being clever.

Of course, he had forgotten that he was a coal miner, a rough neck and a pipeliner. He retired from Conoco in 1985…which was before either of our sons were born.

That was our life with dad. He was a pleasure to be around. He was always a gentlemen, he loved his family and he could light up a room with a smile and an answer that would delight us all. And he taught us that you are never too old to help, that family is your best friend and a well-spoken person is always a gem. 

The odd parallels between Belinda and Rosaline

If someone else noticed the weird coincidences between Belinda and her mother Rosaline, they never explained them to me.

But I certainly discovered them when reading Rosaline’s 1957 and 1958 diaries. I didn’t have to read Belinda’s diaries from 1986 and 1987 because I lived them.

Leo and Rosaline's wedding photo from June 1956.

In June 1956, Rosaline married Leo, who lived and worked in Glendive. So after their wedding Rosaline moved from her family’s farm near Mandan to a different state and to a city where she didn’t know anyone except her husband…or did she?

Why of course she did. Three of her dad’s sisters lived in Glendive. There was Aunt Rose Sterhan, Aunt Mary Pfau and, the youngest, Aunt Kathryn Rust.

There was also Leo’s sister Pat (Perpetua) and her husband Ray Hegel.

So in 1958 when Rosaline – who was the oldest child – had Belinda – also an oldest child – there was a built-in support system to ask questions, find a quick babysitter, etc.

Now jump ahead to 1985 when Belinda married me. Only this time Belinda moved from Glendive to Mandan…basically the opposite of her mother.  And in 1988 when Belinda had her oldest child, all of her questions could be answered by her grandmother. In fact, I think Grandma Frohlich took quite a bit of pleasure in being there for Belinda. It sort of made up for having her daughter move away nearly 30 years ago.

Belinda and my wedding photo from October 1985.

And it wasn’t like Belinda didn’t know anyone in Mandan. While Rosaline had three of her dad’s sisters, Belinda had four of her mom’s brothers – Johnny, Philip, Clifford and Herbie. She also had Rosaline’s mom. Grandma became a suitable substitute for Rosaline for Belinda. After all, they had more similarities than differences.

But if that wasn’t enough, there were also several of Leo’s sisters including Belinda’s Godmother, Clara Wetsch. Besides Aunt Clara, there was also Aunt Barbara and Aunt Alice.

Except for Philip, the rest had gotten married and had children, so Belinda also had lots of cousins…as did Rosaline in Glendive back in the 1950s.

So when Rosaline got married and was just starting to create a new life and depended on the friendship and generosity of her relatives, it was an easy story to understand because we had done the same things.

In fact when we moved to Mandan after Christmas in 1985, it was Philip, Clifford and Herbie who came over to help Leo and I unpack the U-haul during the coldest day of the winter.

Over the years, Rosaline came to rely on her aunts – especially Aunt Katy. Rosaline still sees her cousins Linda (Aunt Katy’s daughter) and Jeannette (Aunt Mary’s daughter).

In Mandan, we have had breakfast with Belinda’s uncles on Saturdays for probably 15 years or more. We also are friends with all of her cousins and see them at least once a year – at the Frohlich reunion.

So if you hear someone say that history repeats itself, indeed it does. And it’s much easier to understand how the previous generation survived when you see the same circumstances surround you as well. 

Brothers and sisters

I saw something on Facebook today that sparked my creativity. It was a “test” called sibling wars and it wanted to know who of my siblings was smartest, most stubborn, most creative, etc. So rather than starting a war, I thought I would simply write a blog about my siblings. Each one of us has our own personality, strengths and weaknesses, but I love them all equally and feel so lucky to call them  family.

I’m the baby – at 58 – that means my oldest brother is now 69. His name is Gene. His full name is Willis Eugene and he was named for dad and one of my mom’s relatives. However, he’s always been Gene to me. When I was growing up in Roundup, Gene was always in a band. In high school, it was called the “Dictions.” Many people who were the age of my parents loved to go to dances and so I became known as “Gene’s brother.” My dad was known as “Gene’s dad.” I don’t think any of us minded because we were proud of Gene and his musical talents. I have many fond memories of my oldest brother. He took me fishing when I was little and I liked being included in his activities. I always thought he was very handsome, so I considered it a compliment when people told me that I looked like my oldest brother.

My sister Janet is 10 years older than me. She lived in Rapid City most of her adult life. Since I lived in places like Baker, Glendive and Mandan,  I generally lived closer to her than any of her other siblings. She was always like a second mother to me.  After raising her children she worked as a librarian in the Rapid City school system, which allowed her enough time to correspond with me daily through e-mails. Now that’s she retired, she seems to be too busy…ha ha. But I still appreciate the time we spend writing e-mails back and forth to each other. A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to take a Hawaiian cruise together. Janet is not the traveler that we are; however, I’m so grateful that she and her husband Ed went with us. We have memories and photos of an unforgettable week in paradise.

My next sibling is my brother Randy. He was probably the most athletic of all my siblings. I remember that he was a pretty good pole-vaulter when he was growing up. Both of my brothers are also very mechanically inclined and I am not. Randy and I have had some memorable experiences together. In the winter of 1980, he moved in with me in my small apartment in Beach, ND, and we worked together at the Golden Valley News. I was a reporter and Randy helped with commercial printing and in the darkroom. He was actually a welder but had hurt himself so was looking for a different job as he was healing. There was no doubt that Randy was good looking and fun loving. The girls in Beach and Wibaux seemed to swarm around him. I knew that things had gone too far when most of the people thought that I was actually older than him. Obviously, he was “younger at heart” than his younger brother who was more studious and career-oriented. However, we have some great memories from our short time of batching together.

Closest in age is my sister Susan. Randy graduated from high school in 1971 and Susan in 1973, so there were a couple of years where Sue simply “ruled the roost.” She was very pretty in high school and married a local school teacher, who was very handsome. Over the years, Susan has been very close to us…all though she has lived the farthest away in miles. When my dad lived with us, we could always count on Susan and her husband Rich to help us out when we needed to be away from home, such as going to Brazil for Derek and Camila’s second wedding. Also they helped us out with dad when Derek and Camila had their first wedding.  Susan, like Janet, is another that likes to email regularly so we know what’s going on with each other…no matter how mundane.

So it’s hard to say who’s the cutest, who’s the smartest, who’s the most stubborn, who has the best hair…we all brought our strengths and weaknesses to the family party. So my final thought is this…our parents were equally proud of each of us. In many ways, we reflected their values of hard work and success, which is the legacy that they left each of us. As  we’ve aged, we’ve probably all mellowed and slowed down some, but in our hey-day, we were forces to be reckoned with. 

I want to see Jesus face-to-face…just not right now

The evening of September 12 was a “come-to-Jesus” moment for me. I was in my front yard mowing my lawn. Unknown to me, my heart was starting to slow down. The beats were getting fainter and farther apart, but, at the time, I only knew that I felt out of breath.

As I turned a corner, I saw a white flash of light in my eyes. In a snap, I knew I had been shocked. My life had been saved.

In January of 2014, I had a pacemaker/defibulator placed into my chest under the skin by my left shoulder. It had never gone off, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I walked into the house and hollered for my wife. I then went and grabbed the papers out of my dresser drawer regarding the device. They said that if your heart goes out of rhythm and your device goes off, well, it’s supposed to. So don’t be worried. Everything worked out right.

In five minutes, I felt just fine. My heart was back in sinus rhythm and I finished mowing the front yard. Then I put the mower away without even starting the backyard.

The next day at work, I got a call from the device clinic at our local hospital. They wanted me to schedule an appointment with my cardiologist – for that day! Normally, it takes up to six months to see a cardiologist and often the doctor doesn’t show up, but rather one of the physician assistants.

What transpired was a series of weekly visits with my cardiologist. At one, I had a test that showed that my heart was still functioning properly. There wasn’t any damage to the heart and my “push” was still in the normal range.

At another, I had an angiogram from my right wrist to my heart to ensure there wasn’t any blockage.

Here I was – a 57-year-old fat man with type II diabetes and a bad heart. Every morning and night I was taking a handful of pills to keep me on the straight and narrow…or so I thought until September 12.

I didn’t see this scenario playing out well. The doctors told me that high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes are a recipe for failure. Pills don’t fix, they just mask the symptoms.

I have a wife, two married sons, and a new grandson, a home, two cars, a garage – I’m living the American dream. I don’t have a job, I have a career. I like what I do and I’m paid well to do it. I have been frugal and saved for a nice retirement. We like to travel and hope to do more in our golden years. But the dream just about ended.

My heart problems started about 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation, which causes my heart to go out of rhythm. The problem was escalated in 2011 when I contacted a virus that attacked my heart. At that time, I lost 60 pounds. But my weight loss was tied to my illness. Because I didn’t feel well, I didn’t eat. Once I started feeling better, my weight started to climb. While I tried to stay active, I found that I could eat more and faster than the exercise could take off. So by last fall, I found myself obese…and nearly dead.

I would like to say that my sons encouraged me to lose weight, but basically they both scolded me and told me that it was time to take bold action. Procrastination would no long work.

I had an appointment with my general practitioner in October and we discussed my health, my weight, my future, etc. He referred me to a weight-loss program that is run by Sanford Health, the same company as the doctor’s clinic and the local hospital.

My wife and I started on October 28. Within a month, we had both lost 20 to 25 pounds. Through this journey, we have learned to be creative when it comes to food choices. We have lived through Thanksgiving and Christmas, one Lions convention and one retirement party and have still continued to lose weight by making smart food choices.

Now, three months later, we are each 40 to 50 pounds lighter than we were in October.

So not only have I lost weight, but my blood sugar readings have shown significant improvement, and I’ve been able to reduce my intake of pills. I still take plenty, but it’s nice to take fewer pills.

I’m not at the end of my journey. In fact, in many ways, I’m just starting my journey to a healthier lifestyle.

I would like to thank the doctors, dieticians and others in the medical field for helping me, but more importantly, I want to thank my family for all their support. They have made this journey fun. 

Some thoughts on being a grandpa

We were at Disneyworld when we heard that we were grandparents. Our first grandchild was born March 10, 2016. Suddenly, the charm of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Magic Kingdom no longer had their grip on me. All I wanted to do was board an airplane and fly back to North Dakota and see Henry.

That’s how I’ll remember becoming a grandpa. Something so fantastic happens that you want to be as close as you can.

In the ensuing seven to eight months we’ve seen this little baby grow. He’s gone from drinking milk to eating food. He’s learned to crawl and pull himself up. He has also flown to Brazil and back…when he was three months old! I don’t think I boarded an airplane until I was in my mid-20s.

When people ask me how many times I played golf this summer, I tell them, “barely at all. Most Saturdays were spent driving to Minot to see Henry.” And every time we see Henry, he is just that much nicer. In fact, leaving him to drive back home is getting tougher and tougher. My consolation, however, is that I live 100 miles away, so I generally know when I will see him again.

His other set of grandparents live in Brazil. His maternal grandma will see Henry when she comes back to the United States for a six-month visit in January 2017. Henry’s maternal grandfather won’t see him until July 2017.

We are lucky to live so close.

It’s different being a grandparent. I won’t say its better, but it’s different. There’s definitely less stress and yet a grandfather wants the grandchild to know that everything will be all right. Even though we aren’t involved in every decision, nor are we around every day, we nevertheless keep a watchful eye on everything. And when it looks like everything is under control and the baby is healthy and happy, then being a grandparent is a blessing. It means that our children grew up and now have the responsibility of raising their children to be productive partners in society. The torch has been passed.

I didn’t have grandpas living when I was child. My dad’s father died 10 years before I was born and my mom’s dad died the year I was born.

I had grandmas and they were wonderful. I miss them always.

My own parents were superb grandparents to my children and the rest of their grandchildren. They lived 400 miles away, but they still kept track of how everything was going. And mom often had a few coaching tips that today seem invaluable to me. Mostly, she told me to “cool it.” Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Children are going to go through stages. Sometimes they are fighting to become more independent, and that’s okay, because your child will want to stand alone someday, just as you did.

That’s good advice, but it’s hard to swallow when your child is a toddler and wants to walk into things with square corners and sharp edges.

And we loved to spend time with my folks and my wife’s folks when the kids were little. I’m sure that our children knew that if they were with their grandparents, the day or the occasion was extra special.

So as I look ahead to being a grandfather for the rest of my life, my prayer is this, “that the little ones know how much I love them and that a grandparent’s love is forever.”

Boyhood memories

I work in an office in Bismarck, North Dakota, so when the weather is nice enough; I try to go for a 10-to-15 minute walk during my coffee breaks. Yesterday was the first day in a couple of months that I had tried to walk outside as I’m afraid of falling on the ice. But the ice has now mostly turned to slush and the sidewalks are generally dry, so it seemed like a good day for a walk.

That is…until I came upon a section of street where there was no sidewalk. Instead, it was just packed snow where hundreds of walkers had been before me…and some dogs. I had to sidestep the doggie do-do and the yellow snow. I kept on walking until I reached dry sidewalk again. For whatever reason, that spot of dirty snow reminded me of walking in Roundup, Montana, when I was growing up.

And then I got to thinking about being a kid in the 1960s versus being a kid today. We not only knew our neighbors, they were our best friends…or in my case…some were also my cousins, my aunts and uncles.

When we learned to ride bicycles, we rode them all over town…and never once wore a helmet. Depending upon the age of our bikes, we would put a chain and a padlock on them when we rode them to school, but if we were at the city park, a grocery store or a baseball diamond, the bikes were perfectly fine without a lock.

We didn’t have car seats for kids. I stood in the front seat between my parents when we drove to Billings or Deadman’s Basin. My older siblings were in the back seat. None of us were wearing a seat belt.

If you were an adult, it was almost a certainty that you smoked. My mom and dad didn’t but my uncles and several of my aunts did. I had a neighbor who ran a grocery store and smoked cigars. My mom had two uncles, who were our neighbors, that smoked pipes and nearly everyone else smoked cigarettes. To be honest, I haven’t smelled tobacco smoke from a pipe in probably two decades, but I remember I used to like it.

Right before I got out of the car to go to Grandma’s house, mom would make sure my face was clean. If it wasn’t, you could bet she would lick her thumb and then scrub the grime off me with spit. I wasn’t the brightest boy in the world, but I knew that wasn’t sanitary. So I tried to keep my face clean…at all costs.

When I was in second grade, I had the honor of having to attend summer school. I think it was a week or two in the summer and it was either in the morning or the afternoon – but not all day. The extra schooling was to help my reading skills and comprehension. Anyway, I would walk to Central School from our home north of the hospital and my dog Lady would walk beside me. Then she would stay at school until I was done for the day and walk home with me. I loved that dog. I was away at college when she died and I was still crying.

Our dog wouldn’t hurt a flea…or so I thought, but she did bite a meter reader and maybe someone else that she considered an intruder. I don’t think we ever chained Lady. We lived by the hills so Lady was free to go and chase rabbits. If she caught one, she’d drag the carcass back to the yard and snack on it…for days. We always had bones in the yard that she had found and was snacking on.

We had a light pole on a small grassy island in the middle of an unpaved avenue. One of my mom’s two uncles would take turns walking to the light pole and turning on the light. I guess there was no electronic eye in those days that would automatically turn the street lamps on. In the summer time, we would play “Hide and Seek” and the pole was “home.” You could hide almost anywhere in the neighborhood, so once you were found; it was always a race back to the pole to see who could touch it first.

Dad changed the oil in the family car on that avenue and since it wasn’t paved, he never bothered to collect the used oil. It just ran down the avenue and sunk into the ground. That avenue is now covered with asphalt, but I wonder if all the used oil would now be considered a hazardous waste by the EPA. I’m sure somebody would make you stop that if you tried it today.

The world has changed plenty in the last 40 years, I’m sure it will continue changing. But I wouldn’t give up my childhood memories for anything. I think the 1960s were the best decade for being a kid and Roundup was a great town to grow up in.

If it weren’t for people like Keith McLean...

It all started out innocent enough. As diligent parents, Belinda and I faithfully attended parent-teacher conferences. When Derek was in sixth grade at the neighborhood elementary school, his teacher told us that he could use a little extra credit in his history class. I asked what he needed to do and she said, “Well, you know a lot of people. Perhaps you could find someone who is a World War II vet to come into our school and give the kids a first-hand account.”

My father was a World War II vet, but he lived 400 miles away from our home in Mandan…plus dad wasn’t one to speak up in public. So then I thought of my good friend Keith McLean, a retired bridge engineer in Bismarck. I first met Keith in 1986 when we were both members of the Bismarck Lions Club. A couple of years later and I would be secretary for the club and he would be the president. I liked the way that he ran the business meeting and asked him where he learned that skill. He told me it was Toastmasters.

In 1989, I joined Toastmasters and eventually became the District Governor, and my biggest supporter was probably Keith. He would even go with me to Minot and other places that I had to visit…mostly to keep me company.

Keith McLean when he was a bridge engineer. 

Keith also told me in 1988 that he thought our choice for Derek’s name was inspired because it sounded like “Dick Van Dyke” only it wasn’t.

So I had a good idea that if I asked Keith to speak to Derek’s 6^th grade class, the answer would probably be “Yes.” The next time I saw him, I asked him and he agreed to speak.

I met Keith one afternoon at Custer Elementary in Mandan and we went to Derek’s classroom. I’ll never forget Keith’s introduction. First, he wrote “1 million” on the chalk board. He told the kids, “that’s how many U.S. soldiers were in World War II and they were all over the globe.”

Then he wrote down the number “one” and he said, “I was one of them. I fought in the Battle of the Bulge and I carried a radio on my back, so if you are looking for a comprehensive history of the war, I can’t do that. But I can tell you what I saw in the European Theater as the Allied Forces battled the Nazis.”

Wow, I thought, this was going to be exciting. But the sixth grade kids seemed to be ignoring Keith. They were noisy and moving around. I didn’t think Keith was getting the respect that he deserved, so I asked the kids, “How many of your grandpas fought in World War II?”

This was about 1999, and to my surprise, Derek was the only sixth grader whose grandfather fought in the big war. No wonder they weren’t paying attention. World War II sounded like a lecture on the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece to them.

So I tried another strategy. I wanted them to understand how important the war was to our freedoms that we enjoy today.

I wanted to say, “If it wasn’t for people like Keith McLean, you might be speaking German or Japanese today.”

That’s what I wanted to say, but at that moment, the weight of that statement hit me straight between the eyes. Because I knew it was true. Like the lyrics in the old Johnny Horton hit “The Bismarck” it was true that “the world depends on us.”

Anyway, when I tried to blurt something out about Keith and the million other brave soldiers, my voice cracked and I started crying.

Well, that got the kids attention, and they stopped fussing around long enough to listen to him…but it did something else too. Derek got teased by his classmates because his dad came to school and cried in front of them.

That night when Derek got home from school, he said, “Thanks dad. Now I only have to beat up half the kids in school for a month before they forget you came to class.”

Hopefully, he was only teasing me. But to this day, Derek reminds me of the time I invited Keith to his sixth grade class and his dad sobbed in public. Not one of my prouder moments, but thanks to Keith, my dad and the other million soldiers, we have enjoyed countless freedoms and economic growth that other countries can only look at with envy. And we still speak English.