My Grandpa Ralph

Remembering one who always remembered me

Last week, my Grandpa Ralph passed away. He had been in pain for quite some time as he struggled with a number of health complications. Since I was in high school he had on and off heart issues, skin cancer at one point, but nothing ever to the point of something serious that truly felt life-threatening. It was almost to the point that we all somewhat believed that grandpa would always be with us.

I was blessed and privileged to grow up close to my grandparents. They were two of the most formative people in my upbringing. Beyond the walls of our own home, their house was an extended home base, whether a short ride across the river in Upper Arlington, or a few blocks down the street in our same neighborhood, or another short car ride down past the high school, before eventually being long distance in Orem.

Grandpa in particular, is the happiest and most cheerful person I know. If there was ever an optimist in this world, someone who greeted each stranger as a friend, it was Horace Lowell Ralph. He didn’t have a mean or unkind bone in his body. He loved and stuck to the tradition of his religion, yes, with an orthodoxy born out a deep love and admiration. While patriarchy itself may be quite an imperfect model, he showed how loving, kind and tender a patriarch could be.

I think one of the things I loved most about going to church on Sundays as a kid, was getting to see Grandpa and Grandma. We wouldn’t always sit with them, but we were allowed to go sit in their row and that always felt special. It was so wonderful to have a place to go, especially in our busy family, where I knew I would get one on one attention. I remember at times subbing in for Scott as his home teaching companion, staying after church to go to ward choir together, or getting to ride home with him and Grandma in their sedan with the license plates “LV GRNKDS” instead of in the GMC Yukon with the rest of our family.

I remember going to their house to help out in the yard, helping to mow the lawn, helping to do small chores around the house, knowing that Grandma would make a nice lunch for us.

One of Grandpa’s absolute favorites was a good root beer float. He was a man from his generation who lived unaffected by the world going on around him. He loved his childhood home, but never expressed a wish to be back there instead of Ohio. I think he truly came to love Ohio as his home. We loved spending time on Sundays at their house. So many of our core cousin memories came from time spent playing in the basement and the backyard. We leaned and played so many games together - Pit, Chess, and there was always a puzzle to do with grandpa.

He was relentless in his dedication to serving in the church. He served in stake and temple presidencies, and was a lifelong temple worker it seemed, and there were of course stories from when we he was bishop. He knew all of the older members, the original Ohio members and greeted them with his same ever-beaming smile. He was never not smiling when he was talking with someone in public.

Time after time, people would tell me that my grandparents were the nicest people and that grandpa was the friendliest person they’d ever met. Still to this day, I have never met or seen a human more naturally inclined to friendship.

That is part of his legacy. That is who Grandpa was and who he taught us to be by example.

I always joke with people that in the Cook family, we get nicer by the generation and I was really a bit of a meanie in comparison to my parents and grandparents. I might be a somewhat nice midwesterner, but my parents are even nicer, and my grandparents were practically saints. They just did not know how to be unkind.

Grandpa also has a deep love for the Spanish language and speaking Spanish. It truly is a remarkable gift and it’s one of the deep shared loves we have that gave us a special bond. He understood these people, their culture, their love, their friendliness, in the same way that I’ve come to understand and love it, and that same part of him, has also become a part of me. He was incredibly fluent.

I remember coming home from my 2 year mission to South Texas, walking through security and seeing him, Grandpa, Claire and Ian there waiting to greet me. I remember being excited to “finally” be able to speak Spanish with Grandpa, and realized quickly that he still spoke much better Spanish than I did.

As I traveled more, he would tell me the stories of his trips when I stopped back in to visit. Taking a boat down to Uruguay for his mission. Getting lost in the catacombs beneath a Catholic Church in Lima, Peru. All the adventures he had or that the two of them had shared together. The time he and Grandma spent in Germany, while he was in the army. The road trip they took with a pup tent in Europe. The places they saw together and the friends they made along the way.

Grandpa always dressed well. He always had a button down, collared shirt - usually a flannel. He always carried a day planner in his pocket - like a missionary. I’m not sure he ever felt comfortable as a “normal” human compared to operating in some form of church capacity. But that was what united him and Grandma. Their love for their church and their religion.

It made their decisions, their priorities and their investments of time, money and energy easy. They were the backstop to building up the church in Ohio. It was clear that this was their mission, and they embraced it together. And I can understand now why it was so difficult for them to make the move back out to Utah that last time. They were saying goodbye to a lifelong labor of love in what had once been a new and unfamiliar land and now had become their home.

In terms of someone who was happy with his life and happy with how he had lived, I can’t think of anyone more satisfied than Grandpa. The side of him that I saw was content and happy to live in the present. He only looked back on the past with gratitude and didn’t seem to worry too much about the future.

I have benefited immensely from that. It was because of my Grandpa’s decision to become a lawyer, and aided by Grandma’s openness to adventure, that they moved back east to Michigan and then to Ohio. So much of my worldview is formed because I come from Ohio. Looking at our other grandpa, the “out west” influence often came from the Cook side, but the Ralph’s made Ohio ours and without their choices, we very well could’ve never came there or into existence at all.

Grandpa was as they say, a natural storyteller. But of all his favorite stories that I remember him telling me, the story of meeting and winning over Grandma was always my favorite to hear.

Their first date came as a simple walk to the post office, grandpa had waited and didn’t know that Grandma was seeing someone else at the time. But he made a good enough impression. While Grandma’s side of the story involves talking about the dance partner she had or the missionary she was writing, Grandpa’s side of the story was simple and clear.

He wanted to be with Grandma and hung in there. He paid the price to win out against the competition, knowing that she would be the woman of his dreams. Grandma recounts the story of going to the Bishop to ask for his advice on who she should marry and his question back was to think about who would be the best long-term partner for her. She still counts it as the best decision she ever made in her life.

This is our family’s origin story. Six kids, twenty something grandkids, and even more great-grandkids are evidence of one man’s steadiness, courage, and goodness. Like a tiny acorn that eventually becomes a giant oak tree, grandpa showed how a well-lived life progresses into a wonderful fruit-bearing endeavor.

He leaves this earth, having made an enormous impact through the family he has raised, supported and led. He was a friend to all. He was always on your side.

Other ad hoc memories I want to put down right now in words:

• His love for music; his trembly tenor voice that wavered with vibrato

• His love for the ukulele

• All of my HS basketball games he came to and watched with Grandma - getting to look up and see them in the stands and how proud they were regardless of how I played or how much

• The way he took every opportunity to speak with strangers (waiters especially for example)

• The story of him faking an emergency with Brother Durham

• His sense of humor, his jokes and the ways that he would let out a fully belly laugh (ho, ho, ho)

• His love for the scriptures and the ways he would participate in priesthood or Sunday school

• The way he scrunched his eyes, squinted and bit his tongue as he would write things down

• His scrawly handwriting that got shakier and shakier with age, but the ways he would still attempt to make it as neat as possible

• His joy when talking about members of the family, sharing news and updates about our lives. He wanted us to be loved and connected to one another

• The tradition of taking grandchildren at age 12 to Put n’ Bay and Kirtland; making sure we had quality time together with them

• Attending the Columbus Ohio temple with him and Grandma. Every time I got to do a sealing session with them he would take time to welcome me and proudly introduce everyone to his grandson.

• The tennis ball in the garage that hold him exactly where to stop when he parked the car.

• The feeling that you always had with Grandpa, of being with him and knowing that you were the most important thing. There was never a rush. They always had all the time in the world to give when we visited and we were the focus and the center of their attention.

• I’m so happy that my niece and nephew are here, and that Grandpa and Grandma got to meet them and spend time with him. I’m at peace with the fact that my spouse and children will never know grandpa, and that does make me sad, but I know I can tell them stories, show them photos and help them see the ways that I am the way I am because of him.