Grandpa Wendorf

The Fourth of July is a day to celebrate freedom and remember who gave us that freedom past and present. It's with great sadness that The Fourth is now a day of remembrance for my grandfather, my fathers father - Don Wendorf. Wednesday evening he passed away. He was plague with many medical issues over the years and we even joked he had nine lives.

When I was a kid I thought my grandpa was the strongest man in the world (no offense Dad). He would pick me up and let me hang from his arm. I'm pretty sure I can attribute my hand eye coordination to him and our many 'Hand Slap' games.  Even as he got older and I became wiser to his tactics I would still lose an embarrassing amount of games. That game was something I always felt was just ours, our something special.

My memories are also endless when it comes to the family trips down to Florida to visit Grandma and Grandpa. Spending hours walking up and down the beach searching for sharks teeth. Searching for drift would or branches to make miniature islands out of wood and shells; and my favorite catching small shellfish before they borrowed under the sand. Never mind the time he let me keep them all and I stuffed them in a bag in my suitcase (without killing of bleaching them). That was a much better 24 hour drive home when we finally figured out where the rotting smell was coming from.

Speaking of shellfish. There was not a trip to Florida in my childhood that we didn't go sand dollar hunting down in Fort Desota. The sandbars would go out for nearly a mile. I eventually became a good enough swimmer to swim from sandbar to sandbar but on top of Dad's or Grandpa's back was the place to be. I'm going to state the obvious though, I'm short! Some of the sand bars were too deep for me to just bend down and grab the sand dollars like everyone else, so I would plug my nose, close and eyes and dig with my hands. When I got tired of that my Dad and Grandpa would hold me while I brought them up between my toes. Something not everyone knows is that sand dollars are actually gray and have to be bleached to turn white, but the real big ones..the really, really big ones are actually red to start and have a distinctive hump on them. One time out my Dad and Grandpa were helping me search for only the biggest of big sand dollars. My Dad was holding me up by my arms and my Grandpa was at my feet ready to grab the sand dollar. I felt one beneath my feet with the biggest hump I'd ever felt. I called them over and I began to dig it out with my toes, got it between my feet and brought it up to the surface. Only problem was, when I got it to the surface it had legs moving around and CLAWS! It was a ginormous crab. My grandfather jumped and started swimming away, and my Dad clear dropped me and started swimming for the shore as well. The two strongest men in my life left me abandoned out in the ocean with mean angry crabs surrounding me! We were never more out of breath or laughing so hard once we finally reached the beach.

I love you Grandpa and know you are at peace now. You will be so missed by many, I wish you could have met Sloane, she is beautiful. I know you'll watch down over us and never miss a moment.