I think if he were here listening right now, my Grandpop would probably try to change the subject or turn up the volume on the nearest TV. He never really liked to talk about himself that much, which is a shame because he was a remarkable man.
He was a husband of fifty-five years, a father of four, grandfather to four more. His family was his treasure, the thing he adored above all else. He was always there for us, sitting in the stands, giving rides, explaining how things work. If something was needed and he had it, he would give it. And if he couldn’t, it pained him to say no. Everyone in the family depended on him for something, and he always came through when you needed him.
I’ll forever associate the game of baseball with my grandfather. He taught me how to field grounders and switch-hit when I was eight. If he could, he would have spent every day of his life watching Richard play baseball or Janet play softball. And I’ll always remember him sitting on the porch, playing solitaire while he listened to the Phillies on his rinky-dink radio. Baseball was a part of who he was.
Teaching and coaching were also major parts of his life. He worked several jobs to pay his way through West Chester State Teachers’ College, which he was always proud of. Bartram High was his second home for many years. He loved it there, was proud of the students he taught, the players he coached and mentored.
Outside of school, he was a creature of habit. Of course, I’m talking about eating habits. He loved food with a passion, which may be partially to blame for his fifty-five year marriage to my grandmother, who I always said should have opened a restaurant. My grandfather ate the way he played basketball: with tenacity. I didn’t know a person could get corn stuck in his eyebrows until I watched him do it with my very own eyes. And it wasn't just dinner: the man kept cake and ice cream on hand the way regular people stock up on paper towels.
Some people in my family called him He-Man. I find this to be inaccurate, because He-Man was aware of his own superhuman strength. My grandfather, on the other hand, was not. For the past twenty years, a screwdriver has been required to open my grandparents' front door due to Jordy’s habit of pulling doorknobs right off the thing. And in the history of automobiles, I think no man has had to replace a turn signal lever more than he has. He practically ripped them clean off.
It was painful watching him in his final years. Here was this great man, this athlete, this guy who didn’t know how to quit, trapped in his own failing body, tethered to an oxygen machine. Instead of victory and satisfaction, his life was pain and tedium. But Jordy being Jordy, he barely remarked upon it. And then this past Friday, he was tired and in pain, worn out from fighting a battle that would have put others to death long before, and he called out to my grandmother. “Babe,” he said in the middle of his restless night. “Call the angels and tell them to come get me.”
The next morning, he had a cup of coffee, fell asleep, and never woke up.
My grandmother never could make a decent cup of coffee.
And though Jordy has passed on, we take comfort in knowing he is no longer a slave to his sickness. He is in heaven, wearing a perfectly worn-in mitt, playing nine innings of baseball with all the angels, who heard his call that Friday night, and came to get him.
