Warning: non technical post.
My grandfather slipped away today. We knew it was coming, and so I took the chance to fly to Maine to get one last chance with him. I had some thoughts about him and people that I want to share, especially about how lucky we both are.
He was 95. He grew up in SF, and watched the Golden Gate bridge being built from his dad's office in the Standard Oil building (225 Bush St). That building is still there. He moved to Palo Alto, and then was shipped off to WWII.
He was smart enough to join up rather than get drafted, and as such got to pick his service. He joined the Navy, and was immediately sent to Antioch college for communications training. He spent the majority of the war there, and then at Columbia for more training. By July 1945 he was done, and sent back to San Francisco to deploy. While on the boat in early September, the bomb on Hiroshima was dropped, and was the effective end of the war in the Pacific. As a result, while my grandfather Justin (who