Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:

Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!

A stained-glass window with my name at the bottom.

My grandpa held several jobs in Wheeling, West Virginia, and one was supervisor of the family coal mine. He later suffered from Black Lung Disease because he had insisted on going down into the mine with the miners. The youngest of three sons in a German family (he was born Heinrich Wilhelm which filtered down to me as Harry William) he later had the opportunity of a lifetime to take a great job in Cleveland in the shipping industry working with the Steinbrenner family (i.e., George of Yankee owner fame) but his older brothers convinced him to stay in Wheeling to take care of their ailing mother. As the younger brother, he did.

It was an opportunity missed that he regretted for the rest of his life. When I knew him he was a broken man, physically and spiritually, nothing like the stories my dad would tell of him.

But he loved fishing. He would get one week of vacation a year and spend months beforehand, every night after work, getting his tackle box ready. It was a big deal. Dad was not fond of fishing in the least and would read in the boat. My uncle Paul went along with it to please grandpa. Grandma did all the hard work, including carrying the boat herself down to the lake. It must have been quite a week.

But there’s more to the story. Over twenty years ago my family and I went back to visit relatives still living in Wheeling and we pulled up to an old Lutheran Church outside of town where the family had once attended. The church is now a medical clinic and the sanctuary is used to store medical records, now situated across the pews where parishioners once sat and sang and prayed.

Then I gasped. While wandering around the perimeter looking at the many stained-glass windows one of them had my name etched at the bottom accompanied by the date, 1925. This story was never told to me or perhaps no one knew to tell it but apparently grandpa had paid for the window at the age of 24. Grandpa did that? The grandpa I knew? Why? How? What?

I regret I don’t remember what the window looked like, what story from scripture grandpa had chosen, for that may have given me a better picture of who he was. I like to think it was Peter and the disciples fishing on the Sea of Galilee, living out their life’s work, pulling in fish day after day and mending their nets at night. Might they also be pictured getting their tackle box ready, anticipating a week on a quiet lake far away from troubles and regrets, while dreaming of a bigger catch and a better life?

Or perhaps the window was of Peter and other disciples at loose ends in the days after Jesus was crucified. How sad Peter looked then, filled with regret and remorse for all that he missed or didn’t do. “Let’s go fishing,” Peter announced to the others, and they did.

I’m sorry, grandpa, that you had such a hard life. But I choose to remember you now at the center of a stained-glass window, on a lake, happy and content, with your fishing rod and tackle box.

And being proud that the name at the bottom is my name too.

Grace and peace,

Harry