Calendar: Holiday: Grandparents Day is celebrated in some locales today

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"The impetus for a National Grandparents Day originated with Marian McQuade, a housewife in Fayette County, West Virginia. Her primary motivation was to champion the cause of lonely elderly in nursing homes. She also hoped to persuade grandchildren to tap the wisdom and heritage their grandparents could provide. USA President Jimmy Carter, in 1978, proclaimed that National Grandparents Day would be celebrated every year on the first Sunday after Labor Day. For 2006, Grandparents Day falls on September 10th."

So, I thawt I'd indicate the designation to refWrite readers not already acquainted with the observance.

I want personally to mention with thanksgiving to God, my grandparents. On the paternal side, I thank the Lord for Victoria and Joseph Gedraitis, and their four sons including my father, Alexander Gedraitis. He died at age 4o, when I was only 3+, and my brother only 6 months old. Due to the vicissitudes of family existence thru the Great Depression and into the WWII, I lost contact with the Gedraitis side of my family, but it had been restored in later years thru my cousin Anna Marie Gedraitis. She too is now gone to be with the Lord.

On the maternal side, I thank God for my grandparents Sue and Frank Balchunas. Frank died while I was a boy, and I was among the whole of our family members who visited him in his last days, laying abed and dying slowly of the painful death by Black Lung contracted in the mines of Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania.

Sue and Frank had three kids, including my mother, Ruth Eleanor Gedraitis. Grandmother Sue transmitted the Christian faith to her side of the family, and she was a lifelong active member of the Congregationalist Church of Mount Carmel. My mother and I are indebted for Sue's witness to Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour and Lord. In myriad ways, she imparted the values that I still try to live by.

Now, my mother, sister, and brother are all gone as well. And on Grandparents Day, as an old man of 66 years, I recall the generations of my descent, with fondness and hope for those who have gone before me.

-- Albert Gedraitis, publisher, refWrite blogs