Uncle Ronald
I've posted in the past about my Grandpa before, thereby blatantly breaking Rule 2 of my own 32 Rules to Keep Your Blog from Sucking. (What a hypocrite I am! Plan on seeing me break that rule often.)
Today I break Rule 2 again to wish my Uncle Ronnie a Happy 87th Birthday this week.
I never had a grandfather in my life. My paternal grandfather, whose face some say I share, died when my father was 11 and I never knew my maternal grandfather.
Uncle Ronnie is my grandmother's first cousin. He's a Lawson and my grandmother's mother was a Lawson. Ronald's dad and my grandmother's mother were sister and brother. The details are still confusing to me, but they don't matter, as he's still Uncle Ronnie. He's the only and closest thing to a Grandfather than I've ever known.
My grandmother is now 91 and lives across the street from Uncle Ronald and his wife Margaret, delights during our visits in telling me that she used to baby-sit Ronald.
The car picture is Ronald in a new 1955 MG TF-1500, and the skiing one is Ronald and his wife of 63 years (not a typo), skiing at Timberline Lodge here in Oregon.
Ronald is the keeper of the family stories and of the family genealogy. Uncle Ronnie is a fine writer and wrote an eloquent write-up of the wake of my cousin Hawthorne Hunt when she passed too early in September of 2002. He's a big letter writer and when I brought him a laptop years ago and set him up with Juno, he single-handedly re-connected the family with dozens of our relatives in Scotland and maintains a huge list of everyone's emails.
I think it's time I set him up with a blog, because he is the family raconteur. He knows every story and tells them better than any of us.
He's creative and fearless. We set up a scanner together and I suggested he start scanning his pictures and certificates for posterity. Once I sent him an email with a picture attachment. He didn't know (at the time) how to Right Click|Save As, so he printed it out on his Inkjet and scanned the photo back in - and I was thrilled with this ingenuity. He surfs the web and emails daily and generally keeps the family all connected and sane, perhaps more than he realizes. I've never seen him angry or cross and he tells a number of excellent Scottish jokes.
Happy Birthday Uncle Ronnie!
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Richard Hallgren
The pictures are very nice, especially like the one in the car. Your uncle Ron sounds like a fun guy, congratz from the Netherlands !
Happy birthday to your uncle Ron. I look forward to reading his blog.
The way you describe him is how, at least to me, a real uncle/grand dad is like.
What does people at that age do for their birthday?
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