SuperGranny and my Grandpa (Special Edition!)

  

Super Granny and my Grandpa

Ennon Lucretia (Horsey) Helmick was my great grandmother. She was born to Andrew Jackson Horsey and Catherine (Willey) Horsey. She lived from August, 1899 until September, 1996. She was 97 years old at the time of her passing.

Ennon was born in Iowa, but spent time in Bremerton, Washington just as the United States was entering the First World War. She returned to Iowa and married Pearl Clyde Helmick on July 2, 1919. Ennon was a spirited woman who gave birth to spirited children, including Paul Clyde Helmick, my grandfather, who arrived on the scene mid-September 1919.

Ennon’s lifespan was amazing. In the first seventy years of her life, technology developed at a breakneck pace.

Ennon was born in a time of horse-drawn carriages, where automobiles were a rarity, and mostly in Europe. It was kind of like the Gilligan’s Island theme song: “No phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury…”

She was born four years after the first automobile patent in the United States, and four years before the Wright Brothers’ famous powered air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Shortly before Ennon’s seventy-third birthday, Apollo 15 landed on the moon, and astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin drove a car on the surface of a different world. A car that had been flown there by powered air flight.

Ennon died less than a year before the first remote-controlled vehicle was driven around on Mars. That is an amazing lifespan.

We called her "SuperGranny."

One anecdote about Ennon: She worked at a hospital for years beyond retirement age, well into her eighties. As the story goes, she frequently would lift (unassisted) patients to- and from their beds. This continued until one day, her false teeth fell from her mouth and landed on one of her patients. At that point, the administration said, “It is time for you to retire, Ennon.”

(L-R) Paul C. Helmick, Mary Helmick, Ennon Helmick

Ennon’s eldest son, Paul, was named after Ennon’s brother, who died in battle during “The Great War.” His death certificate stated that he perished between April 4-8, 1919 in the "Battle of Argonne" in France.

Ennon wanted her brother’s name to live on, and so she thusly named her boy. Fifty years later, my mother wanted to name me after her father.

Paul Clyde Helmick grew up living a farming life in Iowa and Wisconsin. I know very little about his childhood, save for general information provided to me by his younger sister Imogene “Jean” (Helmick) Hughes before her passing, and that mostly was about growing up in Ennon’s home.

Facts that I know about Paul C. Helmick:

·         Grandpa worked as a construction contractor in South America during the Second World War.

·         Grandpa’s company laid the foundation for the world’s first shopping mall, Northgate Mall in Seattle, Washington.

·         Grandpa started a mining equipment sales and rental company in Seattle, with offices in Phoenix, Arizona. My grandmother stayed in Seattle, Grandpa moved to Arizona.

·         Grandpa paid for each of his four grandchildren’s college educations.

·         Grandpa was an avid collector of some of the kitschiest items I’ve ever seen, but I still have dozens of those items.

       

Of course, it should come as no surprise that I, his only grandson, was named after him. Therefore, I am named indirectly after my Great-great-great-Uncle Paul.

A few anecdotes about Grandpa: Grandpa used to come to Seattle almost every Christmas. One of my fondest Christmas memories was the family singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” with each individual having a different Day to sing. Grandpa, (who was nicknamed “Grandpa Frog” by my cousins) croaked out (no pun intended) “Two Turtle Doves” each time, causing raucous laughter for everyone. Sadly, one of my least-fond Christmas memories centered around realizing that I was “Paul, Jr.” and he was “Paul, Sr.” This was exacerbated by “Paul, Sr.” having a ton of cool-looking presents under the Christmas Tree at my Uncle Dennis and Aunt Dottie’s house.

For as long as I knew him, Grandpa dressed the same for everything except formal occasions. He wore light-colored button-down long-sleeved shirts (usually white, or off-white,) dark trousers, that always seemed to be a dark olive-green/dark grey hybrid, and construction boots. His hair was always slicked with some sort of pomade, and it seems like it didn’t turn grey until he turned 90. (I don’t know if this was good genes, or outside forces. Only his hairdresser will know for sure.)

Grandpa was an aficionado of Remington® MicroScreen™ Electric Shavers. (In fact, he gave me one for Christmas when I was in my late teens or early 20s. Grandpa wouldn’t use any other make or model for his shaving needs. As this story goes, once, while traveling, he suffered a malfunction of his Electric Shaver, and went to a repair shop to have it fixed. The proprietor of the shop informed Grandpa that they don’t make the shavers or the parts anymore, but he had a box full of old ones and would happily sell a replacement to Grandpa. Instead, Grandpa bought the whole box of them.

Back in the seventies, we traveled to visit him in Arizona every couple years in the Spring. He used to own an RV, and would take us on drives across the desert. I don’t remember a single destination, but I loved riding in that thing.

 

(L-R) Barbara Creelman, Paul C. Helmick, P.J. Creelman

On one such journey, I had to use the restroom, and was shocked to discover that the RV had a bathroom onboard! Grandpa pulled over, and I expected to have to find some sagebrush and hope not to hit a rattlesnake. Nope.

Grandpa opened a door, revealing a toilet. He squirted some blue liquid into the toilet and sprayed the bathroom with some sort of deodorizing spray.

“That way you won’t stink the whole place up,” he said.

I giggled. I’d never heard an adult talk like that before. It seemed, almost… naughty.

As he got older, he traveled less. While his mom was still alive, he usually threw a massive bash to celebrate her birthday every August, with most of the family making the trek to Anaheim to participate. (I got countless trips to Disneyland during my youth.)

Eventually, Christmas went without Grandpa. Then, eventually, the only way to see him was to travel to Arizona, which I did infrequently.

The last time I saw my Grandpa was on his 90^th Birthday in 2009. We took a train down to Flagstaff, and then shuttled to Phoenix. It was a very fun time, and a lot of his surviving siblings were present.

My grandfather passed away quietly this morning. He is survived by his son, four grand children, ten great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

I miss him. While I was composing my thoughts, I dug out some old photos of him with with my family in the seventies. He would have been in his mid-fifties. He looked super-robust.

That’s how I’ll always remember him.

Thank you for reading this...

Addendum: After posting this, I saw my cousin's post about why they called him "Grandpa Frog."  According to my cousin Jennifer's Facebook post about his passing, "he'd lie down pretending to be the frog and us granddaughters as the princesses would kiss him to wake him up."