“When I think about my grandpa, I think about how selfless of a person he was. This selflessness ranged from spending much of his time volunteering, to not taking the last piece of pizza from the pizza box. I mean it, he was serious about this. If there were one piece left and no one wanted it, he would cut just a sliver off and eat it. If still no one wanted the rest, he would wait a little bit and cut another sliver off. He would do this until he had basically eaten the whole piece of pizza, except one tiny sliver because he always wanted to leave some for someone else. 

 

I think about how sometimes I don’t know what to say in conversation to my best friend, but my Pappy could talk to a random person for hours. I always admired his ability to connect with any person he wanted to. However, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been to a Bob Evans, and end up staying an hour after we leave our table because my grandpa struck up a conversation with Bobby Joe about how tall the corn grew this year or how the Buckeyes are doing.

 

Speaking of the Buckeyes, it always made me laugh that my grandpa loved them so much that he couldn’t watch the game. He would get so into it and was so emotionally invested, that he would have to physically leave the room to calm down because he couldn’t bear to see them fail. 

 

Lastly, my Pappy loved to tell stories. I don’t know where they all came from. You’d think you had heard them all, then out of nowhere, he would tell another wild story from 50 years ago that’s nobody’s ever heard about. It’s important to note that he was able to tell all these stories because he spent his life living. He didn’t take people, places, or moments for granted. While this chapter has come to and end, his story goes on through us. So I encourage all of us here in honor of my grandpa, to leave the last piece of pizza for someone else, talk to strangers, love something so much that you have to leave the room, and keep telling your stories. Thank you.”