Chapter 3
Jeff's Grandparents
I will write just a brief few lines about my grandparents. Unfortunately I never got to meet my grandparents on my father’s side. I think I tell you elsewhere in this autobiography that my grandfather was a lifelong Army person who went from being a cavalry Scout in the 7th Cavalry and then many years later was storming Manila during the Spanish-American War. The only contact ever had with them was a phone call in I believe 1954 when he was well in his 80s and I was about seven years old. He seemed like a wonderful man and I always regret that I never got to meet him or my grandmother on my father's side because they're both wonderful people.
In a way I guess I'm lucky to be here?? Because my dad was an accident. He was born when my grandmother was like 46 or 47 and my dad had a brother that was 26 years older than him and a sister who was 17 years older than him and I did get to meet his sister, my Aunt Harriet. She was a lovely old lady and I met her when she was still living in her own home under her own power with some help from her daughter and she was 100 years old.
I did get to meet my grandfather on my mother's side and he was really a sad case. His name was officially Thomas McCormick but we all called him Pete. My first recollection of him was him coming to live in our house in Ramsey, New Jersey after my grandfather and grandmother had been living in another house in Ramsey, New Jersey.
All I can remember is that my grandmother, a wonderful lady who I barely can remember, suddenly got very sick in her early 50s and was rushed to the hospital and she died when she was 53 years old. I still remember I was in the first grade and I was very, very sad and didn't want to go to school anymore.
Shortly after my grandmother died, my grandfather Pete came to live with us. I still remember he had a really hard time climbing up the cellar stairs because his bed was down in the basement because we didn't have any room on the first floor. My mother and father were so kind and nice they were sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room so that I had my own bedroom and my sister had her own bedroom and my young uncle Dick had the other bedroom upstairs.
I didn't know at the time but found out later on that the reason my grandfather sounded like he was wheezing and gasping and couldn't breathe just going up a flight of stairs was because he had gotten emphysema from smoking Pell Mell cigarettes for many, many years and he continued to smoke them while he lived in our house because this was before the days of cigarettes causing cancer officially being known to the world and people stopped the barbaric practice of smoking in houses infecting young children with second-hand smoke.
My grandfather never quit smoking cigarettes and we used to play gin rummy and other games at times and my grandpa would get all pissed off when I beat him at gin rummy. He was a wonderful man but he was definitely in bad health by the time he came to live with us.
I later found out what a tragic life he had had and that caused the tragic life for my grandmother and my mother and aunt and uncle. My grandfather was a brilliant man and my mother told me at one point somebody offered to pay my grandfather's way through medical school and he didn't do it for whatever reason, I don't know. I try to imagine what the Weber family would be like today if my grandfather had gone to med school, not been a heavy drinker, not been a heavy smoker, and had practiced medicine his whole life. Just off the top of my head I think my life would be better if he had become a doctor instead of an alcoholic.
Then he went to work for Consolidated Edison which is the big electric and gas utility company for New York City. He rose up to the rank of foreman but eventually was fired or had to retire because of his drinking. My grandfather had a big alcohol problem and I'm sure that's why he was in bad health along with smoking all those unfiltered cigarettes that sure didn't help him either.
Finally my grandfather got to be in such bad shape we had to move him to a nursing home that was located in the Bergen Pines Hospital and every week or two I would go down and visit him in this hospital and I could see he was miserable and didn't want to be there but basically it was his own fault for the way he lived his life which hurt him, my grandmother, my mother, and eventually me.