After the war, Aunt Grace and her brothers all returned home to help run the family business. Uncle Harold finished high school. My grandpa and Uncle Kenny got married. Aunt Grace and Uncle Harold moved back home with their parents where they lived for the rest of their lives. Grandpa and Uncle Kenny lived down the road. My grandparents had their only child, my dad.
Uncle Kenny and his wife were unable to have children. During the war, Uncle Kenny watched the bombing of Hiroshima along with other service men aboard a Navy ship. The exposure rendered him sterile. He passed away from skin cancer a few years before I was born.
Out of the four siblings, my dad was the only child. I would like to say that after the war there was a time of peace and serenity. Perhaps there was for a period of time. My great-grandma was a very forceful woman. Before my great grandparents started a successful automotive company, my great-grandma was a school teacher. I suspect that she very easily put the fear of God into disobedient children. She put the fear of God into her own children. Aunt Grace and her siblings (my grandpa especially) spent a lot of time being disciplined out it the wood shed. My great-grandma was the family matriarch. When she passed away, she passed the baton to Aunt Grace.
My Aunt Grace and great-grandma were such a strong overbearing force not to be reckoned with. Grace not only had a strong personality, but she was physically taller than her brothers as well. She was about 5’9″ and her brothers were all barely 5 ft tall. There was a bit of fighting over my dad. Aunt Grace and her mother wanted to raise my dad. So one day my dad stayed overnight by his grandma’s and didn’t come back home. Days at grandma’s turned into weeks which turned into months which turned into a year. The only fault I could find in my grandma was that she was too submissive. She never stood up for herself. But after a year, she told my grandpa that he needed to bring their son back home where he belonged. This created a rift between my grandma and Aunt Grace.
Time trickled by like it tends to do. My mom and Aunt Grace became best friends. My mom viewed Aunt Grace as a mother since her own mother passed away while she was a teenager. My mom’s family was very large and lived far away. So Aunt Grace and Uncle Harold became “grandma” and “grandpa” to us. They helped raise us. Aunt Grace favored my brothers Luke and Matt. My grandparents favored Mark and I. As a group, they helped my parents through some very difficult times.
Outrunning my demons 