Scribblings: Remembering Shandor the Great

Shandor and his bride (or, as my students say, "the handsome man and Audrey Hepburn")

Grandpa and Grandma's "original three"

Twotoundatuggerwidatingtiedtighttwotakesatoapandaboom!

If you can decipher that convoluted sentence, my Grandpa would be quite proud. He used to repeat this long tongue twister to my brothers and I when we were small, and then he would explain that it was actually a grocery list conveyed by a little boy who pronounced the beginning of every word with a “t.” His mother had sent him to the general store with instructions to purchase:

Two pounds of sugar with a string tied tight

Two cakes of soap

And a broom

I cannot recall whether or not the store owner figured out what the boy was trying to say, but I do remember that Grandpa was pretty tickled when I could repeat the sentence in all its obscurity.

My grandpa, christened William Edward Shandor, was a man who found joy in the little things. Whether it was a clever joke, an oft-repeated memory, a little boy’s mixed up grocery list, or an opportunity for a humorous photo, he chuckled his way through much of his life. He loved inside jokes, nicknames, vignettes, and never passed up a chance to make someone laugh. Sometimes he would kid around with a straight face: as a little girl, my mother was convinced that she really could run in between the raindrops if she kept trying.

Sometimes when Grandpa was truly serious, he would make others chuckle. Grandpa was a “dyed-in-the-wool” Democrat because he was convinced that the Dems were the party of “the little guy.” Some of his grandchildren were not exactly on his political side of the fence, and a great deal of kidding happened back and forth. Suspecting that my grandpa’s political loyalties lay less deep than his commitment to saving his pennies, I once prank called him pretending to be a member of the Sebastian Democratic Party, asking for handouts. He promptly hung up on me, and I never let him forget it! One of my favorite pictures of my grandpa is him posing bedside the life-size photo of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter walking down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day. Their smiles and waves are matched by Bill Shandor’s beaming face and raised hand. The “little guy” was walking beside the president. (Although, at six-foot-four, my grandpa was not exactly what you would call “little.”)

Although he was a dedicated, hard worker, my grandpa was also committed to enjoying life. He spent his retirement playing golf, participating in plays at the Theatre Guild, writing a column for the local paper, running the yearly “Shandorian” golf tournament, and even singing in a rap group dubbed “The Old Guys in the New Socks.” His rapping self-introduction began with:

“My name is Billy and I’d like to say

I might be old but that’s ok.”

We grandchildren, who only knew him in his “old days”, thought he was more than ok. He entertained us with stories (the old man with a long beard who lived in the tunnel, the time when young Bill wasted a hard-earned nickel on horrible coffee flavored ice-cream and tricked his buddies into buying another round of cones, the time when he was a military policeman in Japan trying to impress a woman with his one-word vocabulary and she responded in English); he hid quarters in his old Japanese box and swore that they multiplied in there (and then gave them to us!); he wrote letters to us when we moved away and always encouraged us to get an education, work hard, and do what we loved. He taught us to find laughter where we could---every time we walked into a local restaurant which boasted a life-size figure of Humphrey Bogart aiming his pistol, my grandpa asked us to pose with our hands held in surrender. If you find a Morrison posing with a statue or beside a road sign in a way that makes you chuckle, our grandpa taught us to do that.

Even when his health was failing and we were grown, he could make us chuckle. He once got on a kick over the old song “You Picked A Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille” and sang it all week, even serenading my grandma at their anniversary dinner! Once, when he and my brother Noah were sitting at the kitchen table, he started pretending to be a radio announcer describing the colorful life of “Mushroom Morrison”, or “Toledo Tom”---aka, my brother. Noah got right into the spirit of things, stuffed some napkins into his cheeks and gave his own rendition of his fictitious dastardly deeds in his best imitation of Marlin Brando.

Grandpa considered himself one of “the little guys”, but, once I moved to China and set up my grandparents’ wedding picture in my apartment, he took on the identity of a film star. I always laughed when my students caught their first glimpse of that enlarged black and white photo. Their eyes grew round, they gasped audibly, raised their cell phone cameras, and told me how handsome my grandpa was, and how my grandma looked just like Audrey Hepburn. I always knew that these kinds of stories could make my Grandpa smile, and so I relayed the most recent incident of Bill-Shandor-stardom in the postcard I sent him from China in the fall of 2012.

I was attending a student’s wedding in a small Chinese town, and the streets were alive with shoppers, firecrackers, and noise because October 1^st was the beginning of Chinese National holiday. My phone alerted me that I had a new email, and I opened it to read that my grandpa had suddenly passed away. It was September 30 on the other side of the world, and I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I was unable to talk to my grandma until I came back to my city of residence, and all I could think of was: “Did he get my postcard? That would have been my last communication with him!” Postcards from China usually take a month to arrive, so I thought it was a foolish hope.

I called my grandma and discovered that the postcard had arrived the day before he passed away. And it had made him smile.

On this day, September 30, 2013, I remember a man who filled many hearts with laughter. A man who loved his family. A man who was creative, encouraging, and hard-working. A man who loved Karen Carpenter songs, old movies, and good jokes.

A “little guy” who stood very tall in the hearts of all who loved him back.

I miss you, Grandpa.