Grandpa Bishop

Eight years ago today my Grandpa Bishop died. For Family home evening tonight I had my Mom come over and tell the kids a few stories about Grandpa Bishop, and she brought some pictures of him too. Mom did such a good job. She talked about the first time she ever saw her Father cry. She was about 11 years old and her Mother had just picked her up from Piano lessons. They ran to the store and when they got back in the car and turned the radio on they heard that there had been an explosion at the U & I sugar factory and that many had died. Well Grandma and Mom started to cry because Grandpa was at work and they were so afraid for him. When they got home all their neighbors were assembled in their front yard. Mom remembers Grandma pulled in the driveway stopped the car and just sat in the car crying. She was so sure they had all gathered to console her because Grandpa had died. When they did get out of the car they discovered that nobody had heard any news from Grandpa and they were just getting together to find out what they could. Grandma Bishop kept calling the sugar factory but nobody knew where Grandpa was. At nine o'clock that night Grandpa pulled in the driveway in his truck. They all ran outside to hug him and found him in his truck crying. He had seen many of his friends burned and killed that day and it had been horrible. One friend was thrown so far by the explosion that Grandpa found him outside the factory on the railroad tracks, his back had the rail tracks burned into it. In fact their neighbor across the street, they had a little girl Mom's age and they were good friends and still get together now, was one of the men that died that day. Mom had us all choked up with that story.
It was so interesting to the kids to see pictures of Grandpa in his highschool football uniform (not much padding in those days!) and hear stories of his life. I sure love my Grandpa, I had the opportunity (we,I should say since Michael and Jackson were there too!) of living with Grandpa for a few months while we waited for a rental house to become available. This was the year after Grandma had died and I am so grateful I had the chance to live with him. Then we got to have him move to Royal and live on Daisy street just a few houses down from us! We have lots of fun memories of those years with Grandpa and his funny quirks the older he got. He gave us some scares and some laughs during those years. I'm missing you today Grandpa, I wonder if we can watch re-runs in heaven of some of the reunions. I would love to see the one between Grandpa and Grandma.