She was Grandpa’s little girl, the inquisitive one who would sit with him for hours in the backyard listening to his old war stories and never tire of hearing them again and again.
“Enough stories,” Felipe Lopez would finally say. “What do you want to do now, niña?”
Erica Hanson, all of 7 years old, would run into the garage and grab their fishing poles. Half an hour later, they’d be sitting in folding chairs casting a line into Lake Balboa waiting for the fish to bite, which they seldom did.
That was OK; it gave them a chance to talk some more.
Nobody knew Grandpa like she did, so when he told her last May this would probably be his last Memorial Day parade, her antenna went up. Her grandpa, 92 now, was trying to tell her their time together was growing short. He could feel it.
“He had been dropping hints before that, but now I began to worry these might be my last moments with him,” she said. “I felt a sudden panic knowing this could really be it.”
But what could she do? She was 32 years old and living in Singapore now as a program manager for Google in the Indonesia market. She had bought him a computer and taught him to Skype so they could talk face to face every week.
She had made as much time as she could for him when she was back in the States on work assignments and vacations, but that just didn’t seem to be enough. Not for all he had meant to her.
So, Grandpa’s little girl did the only thing she could do for this man she adored. She made him the focus of her life in 2016.
She came home more often to sit in the backyard of the Reseda home he had lived in since 1951, but this time she brought a friend who would film him talking about his life, especially the war years.
She turned down invitations from friends so she could spend more time taking him on day trips — back to the church where he married her late grandmother and to their first tiny home.
She bought him boxes of Cream of Wheat when he mentioned he hadn’t had any since her grandmother died. Funny how a taste can bring back so many fond memories, he would tell her.
She never looked at the clock when she was with him. There was no rush. He was her priority.
She took him to Washington, D.C., to meet the daughters of his best friend in World War II, Nick Orsena, who had died in 2003.
“His daughters were so appreciative,” Hanson said. “He was telling them stories about their father they had never heard before. Grandpa was so happy that day. He just glowed.
“I know he was proud of me. He told everyone at his American Legion Post in Reseda that I worked for Google, but he called it Googles. He told them I went to Stanford and played rugby.
“Yes, he was proud of me, but I was even prouder of him.”
Their next trip together was going to be to Texas to see his brother, Eliseo Lopez, 91, one of five Lopez brothers who served this country in World War II.
They never got the chance. Her grandpa was right. The end was near. He died last month, just shy of his 93rd birthday. Eliseo followed him just 10 days later.
“We heard that he was heartbroken when his older brother died, and he suddenly changed,” Hanson said. “He felt it was OK to pass.”
When she returned to work after her grandpa’s funeral, she told her friends at Google that the one thing she regretted was not having the chance to bring the two brothers together one last time.
“They all said I had done more for my grandfather than any of them had ever done for theirs. None of them had even given a thought to sitting down with their grandparents and filming them as they talked about their lives.
“And all I can think of now is, why? Are we just too busy to spare the time? Are we so focused on the future that we don’t have time for the past?”
Not her. She has a demanding, challenging job with a company that is all about the future, but she’s grounded in the past.
“In honor of my grandpa, I’ve begun collecting more stories of veterans and started a Facebook community called ‘Stories from WW2 Veterans’ to share these stories.”
2016 was for her grandfather. 2017 is for his buddies.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Friday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
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