Grandpa Lowell

This is my sweet Grandpa Lowell Jenkins.  He was born in 1925 which makes him 89 years old.  When I was pregnant with my little Stockton I wanted his middle name to be after my Grandpa but I didn't know what Bryan would think of naming him Stockton Lowell.  So I thought maybe my GPas middle name which is Dean.  But then before I talked to him about it Bryan told me he wanted to name Stockton to be Stockton Lowell after Grandpa.  So glad we were on the same page.  This man is amazing.  His mother died when he was only 5.  He has no memories of her.  Well that's not totally true.  They had her viewing in their living room at their home which I guess was normal for 1930 and he remembers looking into her casket and thinking how pretty she looked and thought she looked like she was sleeping.  He also remembers sitting by their back door and holding her shoes and crying for her because he didn't understand why she was never coming home.  They never talked about my Grandma Martha much.  I also leave flowers on her grave because it's bothers me a mom of little boys had to miss them growing up.  So she deserves flowers.  And My grandpa and I are the only ones that bring them to her. 

 He had a stroke right before Stockton was born.  I was a wreak about it.  I was due in a couple of weeks and I wanted so bad for my Grandpa to meet his name sake.  He doesn't have any other then his own son. The day after I had Stockton he was still in the hospital and they wheeled him over to the maternity part of the hospital so he could meet Stockton.  We hurried and snapped a picture and I was worried it would be the only one we ever got. Fast forward 4 years later (almost to the day of his stroke) and here we are! I love him!

So this next part is mostly for me- 

So the main reason I'm typing this is because I sat down and had a chat with him and I wanted to write down a few of the things I remembered.  I'm giving a lesson in church about being in the world but not of the world.  This man had to go to WW 2 right after he graduated from high school and be in the army.  I asked him about that.  We don't drink or smoke in our religion and I wondered how hard that was for him when everyone around him did those things.  He said that in his barracks there were about 50 men and he was the only LDS one.  Because he didn't drink they made fun of him. So about 4 of them one night took me down on the floor and poured liquor down my throat.  the moral of that story is it tasted so bad I could never, ever do that again.  Most people were nice about it. 800 men from his part of the army were shipped off on a boat that got sunk during the war and died. He got special permission to meet up with one of his brothers durning the war and wasn't on the boat when it happened.  Since he was about the only one left they flew him across france into Germany to help guard germans that were captured in the war.  He didn't like france but he didn't mind Germany. One night we went on petrol and we could see these flares.  It's like the 4th of july.  They heard us and germans did and they shoot those flares so they could see where you were too shoot.  For some reason even though there were lights all over no body shoot. There were about 50,000 prisoners and they didn't want to fight. So we didn't have a lot of up close fighting.  He was stuck in Europe after the war like many other people waiting for a boat home.  He was gone 30 months. Most of that was in France and Germany. After the war was over we traveled around a bit and it looked like tornadoes leveled everything. After the war we kept track of the Germans so they didn't start anything up again.  I asked if he ever went to church and he said sometimes.  Every once in awhile if there were a few lds people around we would do church.  It wasn't very often.

I asked him about a thing called the honor flights.  They take WWII vets and fly them back to DC to see the WWII memorial.  He likes that.  He says they deserve that.  He was humble about it. Said it takes him a day to go a block and he could never go. Far as he is concerred the guys that went through the war they deserve a lot of honor and praise.  They suffered hard.  Most of them.

I'll tell you one thing. Going overseas on a old boat- way too many soldiers on it.  I got seasick. And all the thoughts of war. When the war was over.  I was upset I was going to have to go back to England.  And I didn't want to go through that again.  I did better on my way home.  On the way back we were going across the channel to England.  We go into a real bad storm.  Some of the sailors got sick that had been on boats for months.  But I didn't.  I was going home to my love ones. I was so excited!

What did you do when you came home?  They had the GI bill.  I went to school for three months and they paid my way.  But then I decided to go work at Bennetts. He took what they told him to take at school.  Generals. He didn't like those.

When did you take over Bennetts.  His dad worked up until  he died.  He had a heart attack.  He was only 63 when he died.

No one really talked a lot about his Mom to him after she died.  He had a hard time raising the three boys alone.  I asked if he ever thought that those after they die could see how we grow up and live our lives after they are gone.  I said he thought some- but that they are closer to us then we are to them. They said his mom was pretty. =) She was active in the church. It was a tough them during the depression because they didn't have much to get by on.

I asked what they did when they went down to the store when he dad was working.  He always walked there.  Their dad was the only one with a car.  They would go over to the bluebird and get a piece of candy or play basketball in the back. He had to always walk to school.  He never had a ride in his life he said. Everybody walk. Its good for them.