I thought long and hard about writing this post and the more news I watched the more I became convinced I needed to write it. The idea came to me when I remembered the letters I read that Grandpa Mike wrote to his sister back in Ireland. While it may seem like ancient history, what he had to say is very pertinent to what is happening today.

The letter is postmarked December 12, 1963. I will share some quotes from the letter before making my point.

it was sort of a wild year with all the terrible things that happened, true nothing took place in our immediate family, thank God, but around the world, revolutions, riots, airplane crashes and then our president being shot down in the crime of the century…

it was all so sad, it left us feeling as if we lost some one in the family…

Life has to go on no matter what, Johnson moved up to take his place as president, the Government machinery never stops. I think its a very good system, there is no fighting about it, no the next one in line if anything happened to Johnson would McCormack of Mass. He is speaker of the house of Congress, he is pretty old (72) for that job after him the leader of the Senate, and he is 86, well it never happened before that anyone but the Vice President moved up, but one can never tell, in this mad day anything could happen…

“I think its a good system,” he said. Michael Kerlin, immigrant, with an eighth grade education understood the beauty and importance of the peaceful transition of power.

Michael Kerlin was a veteran of World War I as was my grandfather on my father’s side, Joseph F. Benning, Sr. My father, brother, husband and son, all served.

Now is the time to make peace with ourselves by being honest and reconciling the past with the present with clear eyes and compassionate hearts.

Grandpa Mike was a wise and kind man. He worked as a prison guard at the New Jersey State Prison. When one of his daughters was taking a cab to his wake in Trenton, the cab driver asked who died and added that he must have been some kind of “big shot” because he’d been taking people there all day.

What Grandpa Mike wrote to his sister more than sixty years ago still holds true today. Wealth comes in different forms. In every way that matters, our grandfather was a very rich man and we can still learn a lot from him, if we’ll only listen.