My granddad was born in Harmony Hollow, Front Royal, Warren County, Virginia. He married my grandmother, Minnie Virginia Derflinger, on Dec. 27, 1924, and they had six girls and two boys. My Granddad was a farmer and a beekeeper.

He was a sweet, gentle-spirited and indulgent Granddaddy. He liked people and was not afraid to let it show.

Granddad had about 40 hives of bees and I remember, when he would take the honey from the hives to process, that the bees would get all riled up. I can still picture him coming down the hill from the hives. As a little girl, I would watch from the safety of the screened porch, terrified for my granddad as I watched the cloud of bees swarming all around him, angry that he had taken their honey. I wish that I could ask him now how he was able to bring the honey inside without bringing in any of the bees.

As a child, I scampered all around the farm bare-footed in the Summer and am sure that I must have gotten stung on my feet hundreds of times. Once, as I held my foot and fussed about the mean bee that had stung me, I remember Granddad saying, with a little grin and a twinkle in his eye, "Oh now, I'm sure you hurt my little bee a lot worse than he hurt you."

Granddad had a tender heart. I remember losing a ring, when I was a little girl, which slipped through the wood plank flooring in the pump house. I must have been pretty pathetic because he patted my head and went to get a crowbar to remove a plank from the floor. The pump house was one of the places on the farm that we were not supposed to play in but his voice was gentle and his words were kind, as he handed the ring to me and reminded me that the pump house was not a good place to play. There was no, "I told you so," or "Let that be a lesson," and I never disobeyed and played in the pump house again after that. It takes a very special and kind-hearted person to disassemble a building to stop a child's tears.

When I recall time spent with my granddad, I can't think of one single time that he ever criticized or spoke ill of another person. He never drank or smoked or used profanity and he was a hard worker. Granddad died suddenly, at the age of 78, as the result of an aortic aneurysm. Our family lost a gentle giant that day. My grandmother outlived him by nearly 20 years and, in her advanced age, forgot many of the people and events of her life, but she never forgot her wonderful husband Russell.