Marion Porter (or MP for short).

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 2^nd 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!