What a Gift it is to Tell a Great Story
If there is one thing that is true about my grandfather, it’s that he loved to tell stories.
He was famous for these stories. Or perhaps infamous is the right word. There was never a family dinner that did not end with a 20-minute story about his life or a tale about a long-deceased family member.
As a young child, I remember being fascinated by these stories and playing them out in my head as he spoke, picturing every vivid scene and thinking about these stories long after he was done telling them. As I got a bit older, as so many of us do, I grew low on patience and was anxious to leave the table and do whatever it was I wanted to do. I guess, in my mind, I had more interesting things to do than listen to old stories.
I’m not sure quite when it was, but maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I was sitting at that same table listening to my grandfather tell the story of losing his mother when he was still a very young man. There was something about the humility and emotion with which he told this story, more than 60 years after it happened, that I just had not experienced before.
My grandfather was not a soft man. Most of his stories sounded like they could have been the basis for an epic Hollywood action movie. Thomas Walbert was born to a middle-class family in Western Maryland, but soon found himself the man of the house when his father left the family before his 10th birthday and amidst the Great Depression. At this young age he quit school and began working to support his mother and younger sister. Before his 18th birthday, my grandfather was traveling the country as a professional boxer. A few years later, as an Army Ranger, he stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
These were the stories that I had heard so many times throughout my childhood and I admired my grandfather for living such a brave and amazing life. But it was the story about the death of his mother that captivated me like none of the others.
Like I said, my grandfather became a professional boxer at the age of 16. One night, he was fighting in Detroit and after the fight, his manager told him to get back to Maryland as fast as he could. His mother was on her deathbed and did not have much longer to live. He told us, this with tears in his eyes, how he raced home as fast as he could, and was able to tell his mother goodbye just before she passed.
It was this story that really made me appreciate the gift of storytelling that he possessed. From that day on, I listened intently to every story he told and prodded him to tell more. And it’s through many of my grandfather’s stories that I learned not only about my family and where I came from, but about the desires within myself to live a life worthy of great stories.
My grandfather would not have been able to tell these stories if he had not lived the way he did. You cannot tell a story of bravery unless you have acted bravely. You cannot tell a story of loss unless you have suffered it. And, you cannot tell a story of love unless you have experienced it completely.
Bucky Walbert, as he was known to his friends and family, passed away on Saturday at the age of 90. While we cannot possibly remember every detail of every story, I will always remember the lessons these stories taught me and will continue to be inspired by them to live a life worthy of great stories.