Almost a year to the day that my grandfather passed away, just after reaching 100 (which I wrote or rambled about here and here), comes this year's Presidential Election. Between the fact that this year it falls on my grandfather's birthday and then hearing the sad news that Barack Obama's beloved grandmother had passed away, it is impossible not to think now of him again.
And to wonder about how he would have reacted to this election, and how he would have voted.
For you see, my grandpa Lou was a lifelong, well, what I'd call an FDR Democrat (and he could certainly remember FDR -- in fact, he could vividly remember Coolidge and Harding!) He couldn't stand nor trust most Republican leaders, and up until the last few months of his life maintained a keen sense of interest and active engagement in political affairs. I sometimes felt his abject hatred of George Bush was one of things that kept him going in his final years. (In fact, I swear I think one of his final active physical movements from his deathbed was to shake his fist at the TV screen as CNN showed the president from the Rose Garden.)
But for a long time he also seemed to have a bit of a paternal racist side, not, alas, uncommon among older Jewish retirees in Florida. Feelings about African-Americans in particular, while not at all spiteful, were definitely of the patronizing variety. My dad loves to tell the story of us driving around Golden Gate Park during one of my grandparents visits to San Francisco, and my grandfather from the passenger seat noticing one of the street names in the park, Martin Luther King Blvd. "I see they made a concession to the coloreds, eh?" And the rest of us sinking down as low as we could into our seats, my poor grandmother digging her nails into my knees -- though she often did that to represent her terror at whoever was, and how they were, driving. On the other hand, my grandfather also spoke respectfully at other times about MLK and what a great man he was. It was like that -- the occasional disrespect at African Americans followed by a surprising statement to show he appreciated their contributions.
And so here we have this year's model, an African-American presidential candidate, of mixed race to be precise, versus a "maverick" Republican whom I'm pretty sure my grandfather couldn't stand. We joked that if he was still alive this year, this election would've killed my grandfather anyway.
I'll never know how he would've voted in this one, had he been both still alive and capable of voting, but I like to use an anecdote I heard today from Miles Gerety (volunteering down in Florida), as reported on Huffington Post:
Sometime after 2:30 a man with a Jamaican accent called me and asked me to help an elderly man who was "fading." The elderly man, George McLain (85), father of a police officer and of a speech therapist and grandfather of twelve, looked very tired. It was obvious he needed to sit down. So I walked Mr. McClain across the grass (avoiding the longer sidewalk path) and into the library and found him a seat. The system was that someone in the line would have to act as Mr. McClain's placeholder. Mr. McClain had laughed when I'd softly said I thought Obama would be our next president and he responded "a black man can't be president." He looked frail, I didn't want him to be kept waiting too long inside, so rather than having the Jamaican man act as his place holder, I asked a group of women closer to the front of the line to claim Mr. McClain as their own.
Sometime later, I saw Mr. McClain leaving the polling place. He had voted. I said."Mr. McClain can you tell me who you voted for?" He looked up (I noticed he had a cataract growing in his right eye), tilted his head close to mine, and whispered "Barack Obama, who did you think I'd vote for."
In the last months of my grandfather's life, as his health faded, he was cared for by a lovely Jamaican man whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I had to go say my goodbyes. I saw pictures of the man's family, and heard stories of how he patiently fed my grandafther, gave him liquids when he couldn't eat, even held his hand when he was in pain. As his life slipped away, I heard and then I saw how my grandfather grew to appreciate, even, I think, love the man who helped care for him and could care less about the color of his skin. Some people, as they get older, get even more stubborn with their racist tendencies, clinging to them as if a tattered security blanket. But I think even more people let go of such pettiness.
I will never know how my grandfather would have voted this year if he had the chance, but that anecdote from Florida and my own experience at the end of his long, long life make me think he would've whispered "Barack Obama" and quietly voted for him, too.
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