Nancy P. Keith

So I talked for a long time with my mother last night. I asked a lot of question about her father my grandfather. My grandmother died in 1973 and he had died 7 years earlier. So he died in 1966 the year I was born. I asked about him and she said he was 5' 8" and handsome. She said we got our good looks from him not her mother. He was a sweet and loving man. He drank a lot and smoked three packs a day. But back then everyone did. She said he died from neumonia. She said he always had a cough from smoking three packs a day, but one day he got walking neumonia with no fever and he kept working. Then he got the fever and went to the new hospital in Bethesda and four days later he was dead. The X-rays for the neumonia showed hot spots for cancer in his lungs so he was a goner either way.

She told me about what he did, lobbiest, lawyer, multi  association director. And because he was the boss one year they took a two month cross-country family road trip in his new Pontiac with her mom and grandmother (from my earlier research it was cool to know it must have been Lillian) he worked along the way doing association director stuff in various cities along the way. She said the only highway in the entire trip was the Pennsylvania Turn-pike and it was brand new then. Not like when we would take it from Cleveland to Ocean City when I was little. 

She also told me about taking the S.S. Penrose twin screw 35 foot cabin cruiser with a fire place in the galley up from Maryland to Connecticut where they had recently moved. She and her mom didn't go of course because they would always get seasick. 

Originally he had it docked in MD, but when my parents moved to Connecticut he and my dad sailed it out the Chesapeake Bay, up the Atlantic and down Long Island Sound. It's the first impression I've ever had of my granddad appreciating having a son in law who was Pacific theater Marine war vetran on board. She said my dad did everything on it and did all of the driving too and all the maintenance and upkeep too. It was hard work keeping a boat like that running, but it was always fun when it was in dry dock and everyone would be painting the bottoms of their boats at the boatyard in the Spring. Always felt like a carnival she said. My grandfather kept it in Conneticit the whole time the lived there. She thinks he sold it when they moved to Cleveland.

I also learned my grandfather's middle name was Alva, not Anderson. Anderson was my other grandfather's name so I at least had that part of the story right.

It's Mothers Day so when I post this I am giving her another call. So glad I called her yesterday. So grateful because this call won't be the obligatory it's Mothers Day call, but a I really enjoyed talking with you yesterday please tell me more kind of call. Well, I better get on it.