driveway at home, and seeing the USA on those legendary Ward family car trips. But of course my primary memories are of him as a grandfather -- and he was grandfather extraordinaire. I see him offering his hat to fill with blueberries on Craggy; walking the yard at Temple Drive on Easter afternoon, giving "hot" and "cold" clues until every last egg was found (possible because Grandma stood behind him with a list of each egg's location!); bringing in corn to shuck from the mountain house garden, making us ice cream, or knowing just where to find a turtle to amuse us; spending long NC evenings or afternoons playing endless games of 10-9-8, Samba or Canasta; setting off fireworks for us on the fourth of July (at some risk of fire hazard to the old cabin) to make sure we had a festive holiday; driving countless times to visit me at summer camp and listening patiently while I related all the thrilling little details of camp life (!); actually going down Sliding Rock with us (what a cool Grandpa!); long Sunday dinners gathered around the table, listening while Grandma related all of the extended family news with a detail that would challenge an AP reporter, remaining quiet until he was needed to supply some little missing bit of information; carving the Thanksgiving turkey with great precision with his trusty electric knife, while we looked on and snuck an occasional nibble, and then offering thanks before the meal with a quiet reverence that brought silence to the squirming children and inspired us all to be, like him, truly grateful for our family's bountiful blessings.

Which leads me to my final observation about Grandpa -- he was a man of God. He was so in the old-fashioned sense of the term -- always bound in duty to his fellow human beings, but again, with humility and gentleness. He was in his pew without fail every Sunday as long as his health permitted; I can remember looking out from the choir loft as a teenager and knowing he and Grandma would always be there -- at the early service so they could hear the "young people" sing. Grandpa is such a part of my memory of church that even now I rarely go to church and sing a hymn without somehow envisioning him -- his devotion inspires my own experience of worship. He often commented in recent years about his vision of himself as falling in a line with his ancestors, who were "God-fearing," and it was very important to him that he carried on that tradition with his offspring. But I don't think Grandpa actually "feared" God, but was in fact a very modern believer, modeling a type of faith which I could embrace. He was an open-minded free thinker in the tradition of the Congregational ancestors he so identified with. Though we never discussed these things explicitly, I think Grandpa found God in the pew at First Congregational Church, but also in the orange grove, on the mountain, at the beach, even in the intricacies of a TV circuit board or a computer, and surely in the faces of his family. I have learned much from his example.

So although I will miss him terribly, the image of Grandpa I choose to hold in my heart today is this: he is walking peacefully up a mountain path, following in the line of his ancestors before him, chatting with the God he's going to meet face to face at last on the mountaintop, with us marching behind in the broad, safe path he has lovingly cleared for us, hoping to catch up to him someday.

Go with God, Grandpa.

We will always love you.