Zig Ziglar
said, “A lot of people have gone farther than they thought they could because
someone else thought they could.”
Grampa was
that “someone” for me. He taught me to
have the courage to believe I can accomplish anything I can dream up.
I made note
of that Zig Ziglar quote and how it related to my relationship with my grampa
many months ago and came across it as I was searching for things to share with
you today. It’s as fitting now as it has
ever been as speaking to you today may be the hardest thing I’ve ever
done.
One day back
in November of last year, grampa told me about a man he met who was travelling
from somewhere farther towards the east coast and going all the way to Missouri
on horseback. Knowing my love and
passion for both travel and riding, he had worked out a complete plan on how I
could do the same thing. Travel on
horseback, find farm houses or people in towns who would let me stay with them
each night, or even sleep under the stars.
There was no question in his mind that I could do it. The only detail he forgot was I have no way
to get the horse.
That’s just
the thing though. He believed in
me. Always. He thought I could do anything. In every adventure, goal, dream, or crazy
scheme I came up with, he was always proud and always behind me.
He was like
that with everyone. He would invest
himself in anyone who was willing to learn.
If there’s something you wanted to do or learn, but didn’t know how, he
would never turn down the opportunity to work with you.
He taught me
to drive the backhoe, blow out the lines in trailers, work on the engine of my
old boat, pack wheel bearings, and even redirect a sewer line. That was the great thing about him. Even though I was a girl, he never denied me
the opportunity to try anything. He let
me try everything I was willing to try.
Truth be told, I never cared about how to move a sewer line and really
didn’t care to cut into that nasty thing.
It was more about the opportunity to be with him.
One of the
most important nuggets of wisdom grampa ever shared with me was, “You just have
to keep on dreaming.”
Grampa had a
lot of dreams and adventures in his life.
Those were my favorite stories to hear.
I think he really
enjoyed the fact that I have a kind of wild and free spirit about me and am
always up for a new adventure. The last
couple of years, I’ve been extra jam-packing my world with adventures to come
back and report to him.
I’ve flown
across the country, gone on backpacking trips, gone hang gliding, ridden horses
across the desert, ties sleds to four wheelers, completed a triathlon, and even
built a log cabin in my living room. And
through all of it, all I could think was… “I can’t wait to tell grampa about
this!” And in times when I wasn’t sure I
could do it, I’d always remind myself that grampa would believe I could.
Over the
past few years, because of grampa, I’ve learned the value of having dreams and
focusing on making those dreams come true.
He bought
the campground where he and grama have made their home for the past 39 years
when it was an absolute pit. From what I
hear, it was a cluttered, filthy disaster.
But he saw so much more. It took
all they had to buy that property and a great deal of struggle at times to keep
it, but that was his dream. He took such
great pride in keeping the property beautiful.
Kassidy mentioned the pride they both had in beautifully mowed grass. She wasn’t kidding. There was a right way to mow that grass and
everyone was aware of it.
Here’s how
great his pride was in maintaining the campground dream and a true testament to
how hard of a worker he was. After one
of many stays in the hospital and nursing home, (actually, he might have been
living at the nursing home and just at the campground for the day, I can’t
really remember)… Anyway, he could barely walk, but he was out with Tyler,
Randy and me. He was telling us how to
blow out the lines on the trailers and at one point, Randy had to go down into
a wellhouse or something underground.
Grampa was determined to give him directions on how to do whatever it
was he was doing so he got down on his knees and leaned deep into the hole
Randy was down in. I remember Tyler and
I just looking wide eyed at each other and shrugging our shoulders. There was nothing anyone was going to do to
stop him and I certainly wasn’t about to be the one to try.
My favorite
thing about my grampa was that he never stopped dreaming. Even in the late part of last year, as his
health was continuing to decline, we sat down one day and he was telling me
about all sorts of things he would like to do or have done. Things like having a barn closer to the
house, buying a golf cart, gosh I can’t even begin to remember all the things
he rattled off. Even knowing his time
was short, he kept thinking about new dreams.
Grampa was
my greatest inspiration and one of the people I love and respect most in my
life. Nothing gave me greater joy than
to hear him say he was proud of me.
There are hundreds of little nuggets of wisdom and special memories of
precious moments I shared with him that will live forever in my heart. In every dream I ever have come true, I will
be thankful to him for inspiring me to have the courage to be a dreamer.
