angela_n_hunt | Entries tagged with a death in the family

Albert

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than them, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

- Bernard of Chartres, 12th Century scholar

On Friday, around six in the evening, my uncle by marriage, Albert “Bud” Wheelon, died.

I don’t know how this is my life, some days. Growing up in the shadow of my own father, a giant in his field, and then marrying into a family with giants of their own. Possibly it’s the only way it could have happened. For I was never intimidated by Bud. I had grown up with men and women just like him, because of the peripatetic orbit of my father’s work and career. So when my husband first introduced me to his family, I was, frankly, not impressed.

It took time for that to happen. And when it did…

Bud wasn’t just a giant. He was humble and erudite and fucking brilliant, and in short order, I loved him and continue to love him with a fidelity as close to the love for my own father as can be possible. He was kind and gentle, but with a core of titanium that you could just feel. You didn’t want to play poker with him. His Game Face was that good.

He did enormous things in his life. Youngest and first Deputy Director of Science and Technology for the Central Intelligence Agency. The second Mayor of Area 51, responsible for wrapping up the U2 program and making OXCART go, a project that we all know better as the SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that I was obsessed with as a child, a project that dear friends of my father worked on in direct capacity as engineers and fabricators, and which Bud oversaw to great success. The only civilian who ever got to *ride* in her, a fact that I was insanely jealous of, because he got what I had always dreamed of.

Because of him, we got the KH-9 HEXAGON which some will know as the Big Bird satellite. Because of him? You now have Google Earth.

They don’t make people like Bud anymore. Except that I think maybe they do. But they are not held in the esteem that they once were. I think that it is people like Aaron Schwartz and Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning who are his intellectual heirs. I think that, like my father, Bud’s legacy is both a challenge and a burden and a call to action.

I think that I am ridiculously grateful for my own history, because faced with this challenge and duty, I do not find myself quailing. I find myself bracing my feet and nodding. And saying only one thing:

Rest well, sir. We have the watch.

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.

Margie Mom called me tonight.

She had that tone in her voice.

Last time I had heard it, it was worse, but it was the same sort of news. Last night, my grandfather, Marvin Hyatt, died.

He was almost 94 years old. He'd outlived two wives and one child. He'd served in World War II. He'd run his own business.

He wrote me letters. They were infrequent. But they were precious.

See, when I was six, because my grandparents lived so far away, I started writing to them. My grandmother was the one to write back. Unless she was busy or not feeling well, at which point, my grandfather would do the honors and his handwriting was this impossible to read scrawl that would take me an hour to decipher.

But it was always worth it.

Yes, they were Weather Letters. You know. How the weather was. What the garden was doing. The list of Honey Dos that Grandma had for him.

And love.

They were always filled with love.

So they are precious to me, just as the letters from my grandmother are. I've kept every single one.

When my beloved grandmother died, my grandfather carried on writing back to me. But the letters came less and less frequently. Even typed out, they were harder and harder for him to write and I could tell. But I kept writing. Sent pictures of my girls. My Aunt Rosie would send notes back to tell me how much he loved the letters and the photos.

I will never get another letter.

At least not a physical one.

He lived an amazing life. I know he's gone to sit in the glory of the presence of his God and Savior. I know that he is with my grandmother. I know he is with my father, though I think my father is only visiting Heaven through the side door that opens on the hedonistic Elysian Fields where he's staying.

I can only pray that I leave behind as rich and honorable a legacy as my grandfather's when it comes time to let this flesh go.

Godspeed, Grandpa. I'll see you on the other side.

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The Enchanter's Theorem

Stories, poetry, pictures and musings

Entries tagged with a death in the family

The Shoulders of Giants

Safe Journey Home, Grandpa

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