Grandparents' Day: Donald Joseph Dwyer

Last year, just as I was about to make a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, I saw a note that it was Grandparents' Day. Since a grilled cheese sandwich was my usual lunch whenever I was visiting my Dwyer grandparents, I also whipped up the required chocolate milkshake to accompany my sandwich. As I was eating lunch, it occurred to me that I should have written a post about my grandparents for Grandparents' Day. I ran out of time then, so decided to spend some time working on individual posts about each of my grandparents. This is the first of those post and, right now, the plan is to schedule one to run each Grandparents' Day over the next several years. (Grandparents Day officially falls on the Sunday after Labor Day here in the United States.) I decided to start with my maternal grandfather, Donald Joseph Dwyer (or just Grandpa to me), as he was my last living grandparent.

Grandpa was born in San Francisco on March 22, 1910 to Ignatius Dwyer and Mabel Theler Dwyer. Grandpa was their second, and last, child and was a couple months shy of three years younger than his sister Elise. Grandpa's earliest years were spent growing up in the then heavily Irish Mission District, but by 1918 the Dwyers had moved to the brand new development of Westwood Park and were the proud owners of 101 Westwood Drive. Westwood Drive would play a large role in the Dwyer family through the years, and still does today. The annual family football pool is called the Westwood Challenge and is filled with the descendants of Don Dwyer and his sister Elise Dwyer Pendergast.

Grandpa 1932, Cal grad

Grandpa attended St. Ignatius High School which was located at Hayes and Schrader Streets when he graduated in 1928. St. Ignatius would also eventually see his oldest son and three grandsons, though at different locations. After graduating from SI, Grandpa moved on to college at the University of California at Berkeley. During his freshman year he noticed a pretty girl on the ferry from San Francisco to Berkeley and eventually asked her out. That girl was Mary Audley Kenny. They dated throughout their years at Cal and eventually married on August 4, 1936. Don and Audley went on to have six children (four girls, two boys), seventeen grandchildren, and (at last count) 23 great-grandchildren. They were married for 59 years until Grandma died in 1995 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.

Grandpa worked as an assayer for the United States Mint beginning in 1936. His first year was spent working out of what is now called "The Old Mint" on 5th Street in downtown San Francisco, before moving to the new building on Hermann Street, which is still in operation. The Old Mint was the second mint built in San Francisco and opened in 1874 after the original mint proved to be too small for the volume of gold and coins it was handling. It is one of a few buildings to survive the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and was designated as an historical landmark in 1961.

Grandpa & Grandma wedding
photo 1936

Growing up, I always knew that Grandpa had been an assayer, but did not know what that meant. Whenever I asked my mom "What did Grandpa do?" her response was always "He was an assayer." but could never explain what, exactly, an assayer DID. We visited Philadelphia last year and were able to visit the US Mint and take a self directed tour. One floor had an interactive display on how coins were made with windows that looked down on the production floor where various machines were cranking out different coins (we saw a LOT of pennies!) and along this display was a brief explanation of what assayers do (both currently and in the past.) After all these years, I finally had an idea what Grandpa did for a living! (Of course, now I've completely forgotten it, but I did know for a couple of days at least!) Grandpa retired from the Mint in 1970 and he and Grandma spent time in the late 1970s and 1980s taking tours around the US.

So, that's Grandpa's basic biography, but doesn't really describe the man who called me "chum." My mother went back to work in 1972 after taking a few years off after my brother and I were born, so we spent a lot of that year at Grandma and Grandpa's whenever both of our parents were working. I started school in 1973, so days at Grandma and Grandpa's were less frequent, but we spent a lot of weekends at the house at 2 Upland Drive when our parents enjoyed a weekend away, usually in Monterey.

Grandma & Grandpa's 50th
Anniversary party 1986

My favorite memories of those times are really just small little moments. Sitting outside on the stairs in front of the house and chatting with a neighbor and having Grandpa come outside and say "How're you doing, chum?"; driving down to Ocean Avenue in the front seat of Grandpa's red Ford Fairlane to get a special treat of Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner; sweeping up the tobacco Grandpa would spill all over the house from his pipe. (Okay, that might be more of a Grandma memory as she's the one who handed me the hand broom and dust pan and told me to sweep.) Grandpa's pipe is probably his most defining personal item. He smoked it for most of his adult life and the smell of Half and Half tobacco is still a fond memory. Despite spending a chunk of my childhood nagging my mother to quit smoking cigarettes, Grandpa's pipe never seemed to be a problem. I even remember buying him a can of tobacco for a Christmas present when I was in my teens (how I was able to do that I have no idea.)

Another defining memory of Grandpa is his love for the local sports teams. Grandpa was a die-hard San Francisco 49er and San Francisco Giants fan. He loved cheering on those great 1980s Niners with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and well I could probably name every player from those days and so could Grandpa. As much as Grandpa loved the Niners, it was baseball that was his first love. In the years before the Giants moved to San Francisco from New York, he was a tried and true fan of the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. When the Giants came to town, he had regular tickets to see Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, and Juan Marichal. He'd take my mother and her siblings along from time to time and passed on his love of baseball to them who in turn passed it on to their children. And while I don't specifically remember it, I'm sure many of those days spent at Grandma and Grandpa's had Lon Simmons calling Giants games in the background while Grandpa worked on his daily crossword puzzle.

One of my strongest memories of Grandpa is a rainy weekend spent at the house on Upland Drive when I was about 10 years old. Grandpa had just bought a new all in one stereo system that in addition to the usual radio tuner and record player (no, we didn't call it a turntable then) included both an 8-track tape player (wow!) and a cassette recorder (double wow!) By modern standards (and probably even by 1970s standards) it was a pretty low tech system, but it was new and fancy for Grandma and Grandpa! Because it was a rainy weekend, I'm sure my brother and I were driving Grandma crazy since we were stuck inside all day, so we decided to test out the new cassette recorder by having Grandpa recite some poems for us and record them. Grandpa had memorized poems by Robert Service and others when he was a school boy, but my favorite was always his reciting of "Casey at the Bat." Grandpa recited that and a few others and my brother and I managed to make a mess of a couple of recordings and the tape was put away after playing it for my parents when they returned home from their trip.

Me & cousins D & D
with Grandpa on his 88th birthday

In 1989, Grandpa went through a bout of throat cancer after decades of smoking a pipe. After he came through treatment with a clean bill of health, Grandpa decided to buy a new car. This turned into a boon for me as I then wound up with his red 1967 Ford Fairlane as my first car. The car was enormous by 1990 standards and had a few quirks (leaky transmission and no functioning radio) but with a V-8 engine that car could fly. Of course, it took a bit to actually get up to freeway speeds, but once it did it was great fun to drive. I drove it for about a year and a half until keeping it maintained for my daily commute got to be too much trouble and passed it along to my brother. About a year later he crashed it into a tree, which was about the only thing that could do much damage to that car, and it was deemed a total loss. Grandpa was not happy with me.

The last ten years of Grandpa's life were a bit tough. Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in about 1991 and soon afterward the family had to move her to a board and care facility as it was too difficult to care for her at home. Grandpa was very lonely after Grandma went into care, and when Grandma died in October 1995, most of the family thought Grandpa would surely follow soon. Surprisingly, Grandpa lived another four and a half years, until June 2000. He had a lot of different health problems over those years, including a heart attack in 1999, but ultimately it was just time that caught up with him.

My parents had planned a trip to Italy in June of 2000, and they went, with Grandpa's encouragement, even though they knew it was possible Grandpa might not live to hear about their trip. Sure enough, a few days after Mom and Dad left for Italy, Mom's younger sister called me to say Grandpa didn't have much more time. I took the next afternoon off and went up to the house on Upland to visit and say my final farewell. Grandpa was still awake when I arrived, but I'm not sure he knew who I was. He drifted off to sleep not long after, so I sat and visited with a couple of my aunts and uncles who were also at the house. I was telling them about attending the Giants Opening Day at the brand new Pac Bell Park (now AT&T Park) and my trip to Boston where I got to attend a game at Fenway Park. As the conversation wound on, suddenly a voice came from the bed behind me -- "Bye bye baby!" Grandpa had called out Russ Hodges' famed home run call. It was the last thing he'd ever say. I kissed him goodbye that evening knowing it was for the last time.

Grandpa died early on the morning of June 9 and my aunt called me about 6:30 that morning to let me know. I called my mom in Italy to let her know and then went in to work briefly so I could tie a few things up before taking a few days off to help the family with arrangements. My aunt mentioned to me that my mom had found the recording Grandpa had made with me and my brother back in 1979 recently and asked me to find it at my parents' house so one of my cousins could use it for a memorial slide show. I found it and listened to it for the first time in 20 years and got a huge smile on my face as I remembered that rainy weekend listening to Grandpa recite poems for me.

I miss you old chum.