Frank Boyd 1917-2008

My grandpa passed away this week.  Even though he was 91 years old, it still came as a surprise to us because he was still very active.  The night before he need to go to the hospital for emergency care, he had gone out to a concert.  

My grandpa he had a fantastic voice.  His tone and speed of talk was great for reading out loud.  I recall especially enjoying him reading Dr. Seuss books to me as a child.  Grandpa liked Dr. Seuss too because of all of the creative creatures and rhythmic rhymes.  In the past couple of years grandpa also took on singing in a number of choruses in the area.  Just three weeks ago, he and I were on a long road trip and he made sure to sing for a good part of the way to make the time go by more pleasurably.  He was a bit disappointed in me because I couldn't think up any good songs for him to sing, but I was able to come up with a couple of hymns I knew he would know.  We sang together as we travelled along the parkway with Lake Ontario on our side.

Grandpa was also mischievous.  A couple of years ago I was sitting on the back porch of his apartment with him while he was having a cigarette.  He let his ash on the cigarette get painfully long, and then flick it in the breeze to patiently wait to see if the ash would land on one of porches below him.  He snickered when the ash landed on his neighbor's porch.  

There was another time when he took my sister and I out for milkshakes.  As he got to the bottom of his shake he announced that he was going to slurp it up, and that we were not to tell grandma when we got back home.

As I got older I figured out this side of grandpa and had a good time teasing him about his slyly menacing others.  It surprised him at first that I caught on to his behavior of egging people on, but it was fun to catch him in the act. 

To Frank Boyd a clever, unique, and genuine man!