section>
Chapters
1- September 13th, 1995
2- November 30th, 1944
3- September 15th, 1995
4- November 24th, 1944
5- October 5th, 1995
6- December 5th, 1944
7- October 15th, 1995
8- July 19th, 1941
9- November 5th, 1995
10- December 10th, 1944
11- November 15th, 1995
12- December 7th, 1941
13- November 16th, 1995
14- December 25th, 1944
15- March 1st, 1996
16- June 6th, 1944
17- March 2nd, 1996
18- February 15th, 1945
19- March 3rd, 1996
20- September 17th, 1944
21- March 7th, 1996
22- April 15th, 1945
23- March 20th, 1996
24- August 15th, 1945
25- April 2nd, 1996
Chapter 1.
September 13th, 1995
It was no surprise that everyone loved Grandpa Joe Harper. He was the quintessential sweet older man that invoked memories of the archetypal grandfather from classic films, as though he were the physical embodiment of all the positive imagery of grandfathers in popular media.
Joe was skinny but not frail, with deep blue eyes that reflected the sun as though they were opals. The grandkids called him “Pop Pop” and everyone loved it so much they adopted the nickname themselves. The name suited him, and, like most great nicknames, it just fit, as though Joe was just a name he would have until the moniker of Pop Pop would rightfully take its place. More than once, a stranger, such as a nurse or a telephone salesman, would ask for Joseph, which would create some confusion because people didn’t call him Joseph or even Joe. They only knew him as Pop Pop. Sometimes even Pop Pop himself wouldn’t respond to “Joe.” He would tell his grandkids that Joe was the old reminiscence of a man he wasn’t anymore, as though he were eager to shed the past like a snake does its skin. He was transformed into the lovable elderly man everyone knew and loved. He was Pop Pop.
Pop Pop was tan but not dark, as his northern European heritage would not allow his complexion to become any darker, plus he always wore a fedora tilted to the side like Sinatra, which he would remove indoors and in the presence of women, which just added to his charm and kept the sun off his face. He was handsome too, even at 85, and would have given Sinatra a run for his money in his prime. He would blush when his late wife Emily, or Umma, as she was known by the grandkids, used to tease him about his similarities to ol’Blue Eyes. He would say, “Oh, honey, Frank would be ugly if he couldn’t sing and I can’t, so I must be hideous.” Then he would laugh, oblivious to the fact that no one but himself was laughing, which would inevitably cause anyone in his company to laugh or at least smile. “Jovial” was one of the many adjectives that seemed as though they were created specifically to describe Pop Pop.
It was obvious Joe laughed a lot; the deepest wrinkles on his face were smile lines which had become pronounced in his old age and played across his face as though they were lines on paper. Joe was lovable, however, there was something mysterious in Joe’s eyes, a feeling of conflict that reached out from them as though his past were screaming to speak. This look always beguiled his family and friends. Everyone that knew Pop Pop could feel a sense of conflict, even though he was the happiest man in the neighborhood. Not even his late wife could put her finger on the mystery of Pop Pop. Most people just attribute these feelings of conflict in him and many men his age to their time in World War II.
Pop Pop would never talk about his past prior to meeting Emily. When questioned, he would turn slightly cold and irritable, not enough to make the enquirer notice outright, but just enough to make them not want to dig deeper. What was known to the family from the minimal attempted inquiries was the following:
Joe was an only child, born April 19, 1922, to Danish immigrants, Hans and Petra Schneider. Hans, with Petra, whilst she was pregnant with Joe, had emigrated, along with Petra’s mother Gretta, looking for opportunity, like most emigrants after WWI, and settled in Detroit. They changed their last name from Schneider to Harper to “fit in” with their new country, and when their baby boy was born, Hans and Petra named their son the most American name they could think of – Joe – much to the dismay of Gretta, who wanted them to name him after her late husband Deiter. But this was the new land, the land of the free, and Hans and Petra wanted nothing about their son to be European. He’d be American. Joe Henry Harper, it was, and, really, is there a more quintessential American name than that?
Joe was raised as a normal child of immigrant blue-collar parents. Joe’s dad worked as a mechanic and Petra was a stay-at-home mom. They would never speak Danish at the Harper home. Even though both parents never had the best grasp of English, they had never resorted to Danish once they had moved. Joe, however, did know some bad words in Danish which he had picked up from his father when he would get upset and say them under his breath at Petra, but that was very rare. Those Danish bad words were so rare and out of the ordinary for his father that he’d always remember their pronunciation and would almost jokingly use them, usually in the wrong context, when Umma would ruffle his feathers.
Tragically, Pop Pop’s parents both died in a car accident when he was fifteen. This was another part of his past he did not talk about. After his parents died, he was raised with lackadaisical rules by his elderly grandmother, who barely spoke English and was in the early stages of dementia. Little is known of his high school years, but it was clear that Joe was a class clown with loose rules from a mentally absent grandmother who allowed Joe a great range of freedom not known to boys his age, but a much larger personal responsibility as well. This explained Joe’s great sense of independence and uncanny confidence that only relying on one’s own wits and self-reliance can provide.
Joe joined the army directly out of high school because he had no clue what he would do, and even though he never admitted it out loud to his wife and sons, they believed he was “duped” by a recruiter. However, Joe never spoke highly of the military and actively persuaded his kids not to join.
Much of what was known about Pop Pop in his younger age is from assumptions by the family and inferences into what made him tick. These assumptions were bouncing around in the mind of every one of critiquing age in the Harper family because they were intrigued. Pop Pop was very open about his life after the war but not before. Why was this? This confused his family, especially Umma, but Joe would always say, “I never existed until I met Emily.” Umma never knew him until after the war, and because he had no living family, she never indulged in questions about his upbringing because she sensed a level of pain and anguish that the death of his parents at a young age and the subsequent raising by his mentally absent grandmother had caused. His grandmother had died when he was away at the war. He was never too fond of her, so her memory was not worth bringing up.
The feelings of
