Jerry Hoytt Boles, Jr. 10/16/1927-2/22/2009
My grandfather was born in his mother's family's home in Waxahachie, Texas, seven short months after his parents' marriage. He largely grew up in the Texas panhandle in Tulia, Texas, moving with his family to Fort Worth when he was in high school. He attended Trinity University but graduated from University of North Texas. He met his first wife, my grandmother, in Taos, NM where they were both vacationing with their families. After spending a short time in Chicago while he attended McCormick Theological Seminary, they settled in Stamford, Texas where they raised my mother, uncle, and aunt. They moved to Dumas where he began having an affair with a woman in his congregation, subsequently divorced my grandmother, and married the other woman, Donna Sue (Lyle) Boles shortly thereafter.
I never knew my grandparents together. I have one photo of them sitting on a couch with me on my 1st birthday. On their drive back to Dumas, he asked my grandmother to move out. I am incredibly close to my grandmother, in part because she lived with us when I was younger. And I have never been especially close to my grandfather--in part due to loyalty (I am fiercely loyal to loved ones) and in part because he was not a "natural" grandfather-type. Physically, he was a large man with a loud voice and bushy eyebrows--not a comforting look to a small child. And he wasn't the type to really play with us much--he loved model trains and had an elaborate one set up in his "Play Room," but we were not allowed to touch it. We vacationed every summer of my childhood in Taos at the family cabin my grandparents built together, but he never spent time there with us because he only stayed at the cabin in August. Ironically, when we went to visit, I ended up spending more time with Donna Sue because Grandaddy was working across the street at the church.
This was also the same man who travelled to both my HS and college graduations and who cried every time our Suburban pulled out of his driveway. Who gave me an entire set of luggage when I left for college. Who willingly sat through miserable weather to watch his grandsons play football.
So, I guess I always held out hope that as I got older, became less childlike and more adult, that we would (could?) grow closer. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Donna Sue and her children from her first marriage coerced him into a nursing home where he received questionable care and his health deteriorated. Honestly, I think it was his incredibly forceful personality that kept him alive from Feb 2003 until this week. I can't say it was his will to live because he would cry, beg, and plead with us to just take him home (an experience no grandchild should ever have to live through).
In thinking about his passing, I guess I feel somewhat cheated. I'm not sure there was anything that I could do differently, but I am regretful that I didn't know him better. And it makes me more determined to foster loving relationships for Louisa with her grandparents.
88, W5CIV.
