I remember when I was younger, I loved going to my grandparent’s house. Their favorite hobby is selling and buying items at flea markets, so their basement was filled with fun toys and crazy souvenirs. My grandpa would always say, “Go grab any toy you want, but don’t tell your grandma.” My grandpa and I always had a special bond with each other, and I know he has also overcome so much in his life, and that makes me look up to him. My grandpa is my hero because he has nine kids, has worked two jobs, and survived cancer at the age of eighty!

If you have five kids now a days you are considered crazy, but what about having nine! My grandpa and grandma have nine kids including my mom. Mary, Donna, Linda, Peggy, Jerry, Ken, Diane, Betty, and Judy every Sunday would all pile into their gigantic green van, nicknamed the pickle, and headed off to church. My grandparent’s were and still are very religious. This has helped me in my life and shaped the kind of person I am today.

“My house was always crazy, never boring or normal.” My grandpa always tells me hilarious stories about all the kids fighting and all the chaos. One of my favorite stories was the one where my uncle, Jerry, tied my mom up and hid her in the coat closet. My grandpa says he went to get his leather jacket from the coat closet and there my mom was hands and feet tied. Jerry, of course, thought it was extremely funny, but my mom and my grandpa didn’t at all. Even though they fought constantly, they all loved each other very much.

My grandpa is the hardest worker I know, and I think he is the hardest worker I will ever know. He has always put his family and pretty much everyone first. He has always lived his life with the “what would Jesus do” motto, and I think that that has worked out for him. To support his wife and nine kids, he had to work two jobs to make ends meet. My grandma worked as a teacher for a little bit, but with all those kids she eventually quit and worked as a stay at home mom.

A train conductor was my grandpa’s main job; however, he also worked as a firefighter. “It got hard at times, but I knew I was doing the right thing.” Everyday he would get up around six and head off to the train station. He was in charge of transporting all the goods on the train to multiple locations. “I always loved trains, so that made my job that much more exciting, plus I got to see different and new sceneries.”

“I’m sorry, but you have cancer,” are the words we all dread to hear, but that is what my grandpa heard at the age of eighty. He had Non-Hopkins Lymphoma that attacks the lymph nodes in the body. Fighting off cancer is extremely hard to do especially at the age of eighty. When you get that old, your immune system gets very weak, and it can’t fight against the invading infection. My grandpa fought cancer for two years, and thankfully it went into remission. Now he is eighty-four and he is alive and well.

As you can tell, my grandpa is an amazing guy. He has always been there for me when I need it the most. I don’t think that I could ever ask for a better grandpa. I love the way his hair is thin and white, and how he always wears white shirts with thick white socks that go up to the middle of his shins. I know that if I ever need help, or fashion advice, he would help me know matter what. My grandpa would always say, “Family would do anything for each other, be it small or gigantic.”