Never met my paternal grandfather (neither did my dad) but he was Irish-Quebecois. I guess he died in a car accident when my dad was a baby.

Paternal grandmother (June) was a very strong-willed stubborn Irish woman. She was born in 1908, died 2003. Had my dad when she was 48 & raised him on her own. She was a switchboard operator then a postal service worker. She had alzheimers severely for the last 8 or so years before her death, but was very cheerful. She had a large part in raising my sister and I. She had another son before my dad (his half-brother) whose children include Joe ("Pecker" producer) and Steve (engineered Liars and the Rapture albums).

Maternal grandmother (Virginia, "Gigi") was a very classy college educated Ukrainian-American. My mom said her clearest memory of her from childhood was her holding a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other, wearing one of her sequin-covered evening dresses even just around the house. She died in 2002 of lung cancer.

Maternal grandfather (Dwight, "Boompa") served in WWII as a musician (trumpet), got an MA in English and became a teacher. When he retired from teaching he became an artist full time. His art is in the Jackson, MI Ella Sharp art museum. He does very colorful abstract oil paintings. I don't know enough about art to describe it beyond that. They're very weird and cool.

Grandparents = NC

My Paternal grandfather was a pool-hustler in the many temporary coal towns of southern WV way back in the day...he parlayed his success into opening a general store in Rupert, WV...where he met my grandmother and gave birth to my dad.

My maternal grandfather was a an alcoholic horse-back cop from Oklahoma. He died shoveling snow during a blizzard in Fayetteville, WV when my mother was 8 years old.

My maternal grandmother was an orphan who grew up in flop-houses and met my grandfather while dancing for change in a hillbilly logging-town bar during the late 20's.

They are all dead now.

Mum's side:

Ethel, turned 91 at the beginning of March, a little wobbly on her pins but still super perceptive and has an incredible memory. The last time I saw her she opened up about her family history (a half brother she discovered in her 80s had recently died) and told me she was born after a couple of young sweethearts 'got up to mischief' during a summer trip to Norfolk. Being a single mum in that era carried quite a stigma and possibly because of that or possibly because he was a cold hearted bastard her stepfather only ever spoke one sentence to her, a week later he keeled over dead on the spot just before he lit a cigarette - with a country darkness that wouldn't seem out of place in a southern gothic novel the cigarette had pride of place on the mantelpiece. Shortly afterwards, she went into service at the age of fourteen and remained so for the rest of her working life, she was still cleaning the mansion of a detestable local landowner whose kids she had effectively brought up well into her 70s. In keeping with her impulsive, impish side, she ran away from her first job to marry my grandfather. They had two sons and a daughter and a long, happy marriage.

Harry - died when I was as eight. A decent, old fashioned rural gent - huge leather belts and moleskin trousers, loved his garden and always smelled vaguely of pipe smoke. I can't picture him without a pair of shears in his hands, tending his hedge. Allegedly once 'cured a horse with a puffball', full of stories and characters, I can remember him telling me about local eccentrics being 'moonstruck', someone called Cockerel Hackett who crowed like a rooster. I've learned from an uncle that beneath his Victorian values and impeccable manners he could be quite eccentric and loved opera, lying on the floor of his wooden house to listen to arias on his little Philips radio. One notable thing about him is that he simply couldn't countenance anyone going to the moon (why would they?) - his explanation being that they'd merely 'been to camp in Bucknall woods' - Bucknall being a small village a few miles away.

My grandma had to give up the house they'd lived together in all their married life a few years ago to move into a sheltered flat closer to my mum. I can remember it vividly, drawing water from the well (running water didn't arrive until the 1980s) or the shed full of freshly skinned rabbits. It was a weird juxtaposition seeing a picture of it on an estate agents website.



Dad's:

William also 91 still going strong, he recently told me that he's decided live to be 100. He was a Desert Rat in WWII although he never speaks about it. Somehow, during his visits home and after the war he managed to father ten children of which my father is the second oldest. Plays the banjo and organ and an obsessive tinkerer - his house is full of marquetry, ships in bottles and other things he's turned his hands to over the years (he once made a garden strimmer out of a motor and a blade cut from a tin of beans but it interfered with the whole street's TV reception). He's a friendly, jovial sort full of riddles and nonsense and Grandfatherly bullshit, I absolutely loved going to visit him as a kid but as my dad had a really awkward relationship with his mother it was once a year at best we got to see them. A few years ago a cousin in Australia started to trace the family tree and kept hitting a brick wall, it forced my granddad to give up his lifelong secret - that he was the result of an affair between his mum and a well to do businessman who had supported her while she brought him up. I felt bad for him being so ashamed about something which to my generation merely adds a bit of spice to the family back-story. His wife of countless years died in 2004 and since then he's flown to Australia to visit his children there and made a trip to Belgium to visit the graves of some old army buddies, he seems to be trying to make the most of life.

It saddens me that I don't have more to say about my paternal grandmother as I never really got to know her. She was always kind and was obviously proud of her huge brood but I think bringing up a large wartime family sometimes on her own meant money and affection were in short supply and my father's upbringing was one of tough love, he remained fairly distant from her after leaving home at sixteen. My most vivid memory of visiting them is probably being four or five years old in 1977 for the silver jubilee and the whole street having an epic party with bunting and pearly kings and queens.

I'm a bastard so I only know the grandparents on me mum's side.

Grandma was a nurse for 56 years. Tiny Italian lady, she could flip patients over by herself and even in her late 70's could arm-wrestle most youngsrters into submission. She worked at the very first abortion clinic in New York. She was the strongest/tiniest person I have met. Vice grip fists, could have taught Bruce Lee a thing. Hope she never gave handjobs, ouch. Lived to be 93. Kind and volatile at the same time. As she got older, the wrinkles on her face became like the pattern of a butterfly's wings.

Grandpa was a very thoughtful fellow, read wrote and sketched a lot. For a German/Irish fellow, he had a massive dick. No wonder they slept in different beds. He was born and lived in Harlem as a young man, possibly when they still spelled it "Haarlem." He taught me to be resourceful and creative when fixing or building things, and he always had boxes of random parts and bits, with which he'd build toys for me and make little sculptures. Too many Camel non-filters took him out in his early 80's. I wonder what I would be like if I had known him in my adulthood.

To you, Theresa and Ray!

Grandparents? I'm down to exactly none.

Both of my grandfathers died when I was very young, so I don't really remember them.
My dad's mom, who passed away about three years ago, was kind of strange. She lived alone in an apartment on Winnemac and always kept the shades drawn. She liked to stay inside and ate lots of Saltines. I remember sometimes staying overnight at her old house in South Holland and all we would have to eat would be peanut butter, jelly and Saltines. She was pretty depressed and always thought she was imposing if she showed up to one of our family functions. She didn't even come to my high school graduation party because she thought she'd be "imposing".
My mom's mom rocks. I don't know how old she is, but she's 30 at heart. She now lives in Michigan with my uncle and aunt and I miss her so much. She's young at heart and full of spunk. She loves to go to the gambling boats and watches soap operas (her stories) and would call my mom up on the phone all the way from Michigan, just to ask her for help on a solution to a crossword puzzle. She's so much fun. My Gramma rocks!

My grandfather on my mother's side landed in France as a member of the 101st Airborne Division just before the amphibious landing on Normandy.

My grandfather on my father's worked on the Rock Island Line during the depression.