How Grandparents Succeed
by William B. Smart, Messages for a Happier Life, 95-97.

Because we learn more by example than by precept, funerals can be among the most instructive meetings we attend. Who can hear tributes paid to the life of one who dies strong in faith and beloved for service without taking new resolve to emulate that faith and service?

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Every day funerals honor men and women who achieve no fame beyond their circle of family and friends, but who within that circle are heroes and heroines.

Such a man died recently. In his eighty-six years of life he achieved modest business success, gave faithful but not particularly noteworthy service in various Church callings, raised a reasonably successful but hardly famous family.

Nothing remarkable about that. What did stand out at his funeral was that this man had been a living textbook in how to be a successful grandfather.

His formula goes like this: First, there was his profound sense of the importance of family. His children and grandchildren learned at an early age they belonged to something special and important—a family that looked back to its roots with reverence and gratitude and forward to future generations with the greatest love and concern.

Not that he preached about family importance; he simply demonstrated it by the uncounted thousands of miles he traveled for the blessing of babies, baptisms, ordinations, graduations, weddings. No grandchild of his ever had cause to doubt his or her importance.

His determination to keep family ties strong led to family reunions every two years for over thirty years. Three- and four-day affairs they were, at mountain lakes, the seashore, the desert, always a new place. They followed his special formula—minimal business meetings and preaching, maximum togetherness, fun, and meaningful interchange.

“I want the grandchildren to come because they want to, not out of duty,” he insisted. And come they did, year after year, from all over the country.

So the way he worked at building family love, unity, and importance was one part of his success formula. Coupled with it was his capacity to enjoy and be enjoyed.

On his eightieth birthday, the family prepared a book of his life, with a page from each grandchild describing “How I remember Grandpa.” Many commented on his spiritual strength as patriarch of his family and a patriarch in the Church, of blessings given, private moments of counseling, his steadiness and reliability, the great, warm sense of love that surrounded him.

But many more (all, in fact) wrote of how much fun he was to be with, of his sense of humor, his love of games, the honor of being challenged by him to a game of Ping-Pong. They remembered sessions of Scrabble, carroms, “Stomp Your Neighbor.” They remembered the nonsense songs he sang to them, the poems he recited, the magic tricks he performed. Almost all marveled at how he seemed to love life, how he never seemed to grow old.

If he had ever lectured on good grandparenting (and, of course, he never did) he would have said, “Enjoy your grandchildren. Play with them. Stay involved. Stay young. And always, always love them and let them know it.”

One son who had departed somewhat from his father’s faith spoke at the funeral, listing two other success qualities. First, he listed authority without severity. “I don’t think any of us children ever questioned Father’s authority,” he said. “But it was never authority exercised by edict or threat. If we obeyed, it was because we respected the example of our father’s life.”

Second, he listed his father’s unswerving devotion to his own faith, combined with complete empathy for those who did not share it. “Father was dogmatic (in the best sense of the word) in his devotion to his religious principles,” he said. “At the same time, he was incapable of imposing judgment on those who did not share his vision. For me, this infinite capacity for unconditioned love made it possible to live a productive life with self-esteem.

“Unlike the biblical parent who was capable of welcoming the prodigal back into the fold, Father didn’t even recognize the concept of a prodigal. A son was a son, and that was that.”

Which was true, but it’s also true that this man never left the slightest doubt in the minds of his children and grandchildren that his greatest hope, his constant, most fervent prayer, was that they share the faith and righteousness that would enable them to live with the family eternally.

Every child deserves a grandfather like that. What a tragedy, in this day of rootlessness and family fragmentation, that more don’t have one.

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