100 years ago today my grandfather Marion Porter Gunthrop
was born in Great Falls, South Carolina. He married my grandmother Cleo
Elizabeth Lewis and they went on to create, in my minds eye, the perfect
family.
For a very long time we lived with MP and Cleo. Me, my mom
and dad and my three sisters. In what I know now was a really small house in
Queens, NY. It didn’t seem small at the
time. Nana and Granddaddy had a bedroom in the basement and we were all the way
up stairs on the 2nd floor. It felt palatial and cozy at the same
time. In fact one of the few “traumas” I remember growing up was when my mom
and dad decided to move us kids all out to Long Island. I didn’t want to leave and remember how it
felt to this day. That experience of living with them has, as much as anything
else, made me the person I am today. I got to know all of my other relatives,
including my fathers family in some sense, because MP and Cleo made it so that
everyone always felt at home in our house and everyone was always welcomed. Fellie
and Joyce, (My dad’s parents) were as close to MP and Cleo in my mind as was
any others in each of their own families. In fact to me as a kid the whole
group of them were indistinguishable as to who was related to whom. It seemed like they were all simply brothers
and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews all just a big part of the
same brood!
I’ve always felt that he was ahead of his time. But at the
same time he lived in a way that wouldn’t let the best of the past get away. He
lived in the city but was an avid outdoorsman. He traveled to his favorite
place, upstate NY whenever he could, always stopping at the same roadside
stream to bring us some “good water” back from the mountains. And if I was lucky
enough to be in the trip, stopping at the same roadside stand for hamburgers
from freshly butchered cows! Any wonder why I’m still a meat eater? At the same
time he was a big city construction worker and spent his days creating the
infrastructure of NY. He was a product of the rural south and certainly endured
many indignities along the way, but I never recall him speaking out in anger or
harboring resentment for anyone because of what they looked like or where they
came from. He was big and quiet, funny and thoughtful. He worked as a “Sand
Hog” (Laborer’s Local Union 147 in NYC) worked on Water Tunnel #3, the largest
construction project in the history of New York State (it’s not scheduled to be
completed until 2020). He was a blast foreman. He worked on the construction of
the NY State Thruway. He ran a Jackhammer. He worked on the Pentagon the George
Washington Bridge and if legend is to be believed (I may have made this up) was
the first black foreman at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He sometimes moved between
jobs in Boston, Baltimore and NY by hoping on freight trains…and yes that made
him a “hobo” but a more dignified hobo I suspect there never was.
When I graduated from high school we had a party at our
house on Long Island. It was just after the graduation ceremony and me and all
of my friends were looking forward to some time relaxing at the beach for the
next few weeks … starting promptly that next day, Monday morning. My dad
however had different plans. I was to begin work bright and early the next day
as a messenger for his firm, Solomon Brothers. No days off, right to work. All
summer long until it was time for me to report to football camp at Catholic
University that August. As you might imagine I was furious. All I wanted was a
few days to relax with my friends. School had just ended and I wanted to enjoy
the summer for a bit. I pouted and sulked around my own graduation party for
about an hour until Granddaddy pulled me aside. “You need to stop acting like
this,” he told me. “I’ve been breaking my back in these tunnels all of my life.
Now you’ve got a job and an opportunity to make something of your life. Take it
and be thankful because you don’t want to end up like me.” I’ve spent the last 34 years trying to become
half the man that he was…I should be so lucky as to end up "like him."
Happy Birthday Granddaddy!
