On the day of Barack Obama's Inaugural my neighbor turned to me and said, "We must keep him in our prayers, as he will need all the help he can get." Though it's been a long time since I've given much credence to prayer, I nodded and added, "So will we." That brief conversation triggered a sharp memory of the one time, sixty-four years ago, when I saw my grandmother in tears.

It was April, 1945. The Germans were defeated but not quite ready to admit it, and the war in the Pacific was intensifying into a maelstrom of increasingly horrific catastrophes. I had been with Grand for almost a year. My Uncle Jerry, who was a bachelor and still lived at home, was off saving the world from Hitler. When he left for Europe, my mother sent me to live with Grand, partly to keep her company, but mostly to cut down on the burden of trying, without the help of her long gone bigamist of a husband, to care for three young boys.

...

I think I missed my Uncle Jerry as much as Grand did. It seemed like forever since we'd gone fishing or to a ball game. I slept in his big bed beneath a painting of a three-masted clipper ship sailing through the swells at sunset. His single-action .22 stood in the corner, his college letters in baseball and track hung on the far wall, and his pitcher's glove rested on the other pillow next to my head.

Grand wasn't one for tears, at least not in her late years when I knew her. My earliest memory of her was of a stern, tight-lipped woman who frowned a lot and bad-mouthed most of the men she had ever known. She'd been divorced twice before the end of the Roaring Twenties, and Uncle Jerry always said that she was too far ahead of her time, whatever that was supposed to mean, and that me and him were the only two males she could ever get along with. Not until years later did I learn of and come to understand the tears she had shed at various times in her headstrong, lonely and increasingly bitter life.

Even though Grand's house was five blocks from school, I always ran home for lunch. She figured she could feed me for a lot less than the school charged and do the job better, which was her proud way of saying she couldn't afford the two bits cafeteria charge. Though I never complained about missing the stewed tomatoes, macaroni-and-cheese and canned green beans that gagged my friends, sometimes I did complain about the hurried ten block round trip. But today I was excited to get home and share my news.

After being gone all week, Miss Sanders, who I will always remember as my first love, had returned to our fourth grade classroom. Just the week before, over the telephone, her now never-to-be mother-in-law had informed Miss Sanders that her fiancée had been shot down over Germany. My buddy Tony had heard the principal tell another teacher that Miss Sanders was under sedation. All this week we had been afflicted with a substitute who made us sit erect at our desks all day, and who wouldn't let us talk about Miss Sanders or the war.

This morning Miss Sanders seemed glad to be back with us, though not glad in herself. Rather than her usual brightly flowered dresses and jangling bracelets, she wore a long black skirt and a grey and white striped blouse, and she had pulled her thick chestnut hair into a severe bun. When going over our assignments, she spoke even more softly than usual and frequently halted in mid-sentence to gaze out the window. Usually we'd spend the first half hour getting caught up on the war news and what it all meant, but this morning she'd said, "I'm sorry, class, but I can't talk about that world right now. Maybe after lunch I'll feel stronger." That was okay with us; we were just glad to have her back. Miss Sanders had a soft touch and wide violet eyes that seemed to take you in for a big hug. And many of us were in sharp need of such hugs.

Just before lunch break, she called James and Betty and me to the front of the room to award reading prizes. When my turn came she handed me an illustrated copy of Huckleberry Finn that she had signed personally, and told the class that since Christmas I had read more books than anybody else in her class, and that we should try to follow my example. When she said that, she looked into my eyes and gave me that special smile that gave me good dreams. Then the lunch bell rang. I ran all the way home to tell Grand that Miss Sanders was back and what she'd said about me, and to show Grand the book that, other than Uncle Jerry's baseball glove, had immediately become my most prized possession.

Usually Grand was already in the kitchen working on lunch, but when I glanced in the front window I saw her slumped in the chair she used only for listening to the radio. She held her wrinkled handkerchief to her eyes and her shoulders shook. Since I had never seen her cry, her tears frightened me.

Grand was the strongest woman I have ever known, a hard-bitten, proud and opinionated jack-Mormon who enjoyed her evening glass of sherry, wore her salt-and-pepper hair short, and openly despised the hypocrisy she claimed to see in her fellow Mormons. Except for Uncle Jerry, who was un-married though into his thirties, she had been living alone since long before I was born. Grand came from a large Mormon family in southern Idaho, and married my grandfather in the Logan temple. When she divorced Grandfather and dragged her two small children away from Zion to follow a sailor to San Francisco, her Mormon relatives all but shunned her and stopped answering her letters. After she divorced her second husband, Grand's father sent her a two-sentence letter: "You are no longer part of the family. Stop writing."

My Mom, who always seemed half afraid of her mother, used to say that Grand didn't need anything or anyone. But even then I knew Mom was wrong. Grand needed Uncle Jerry.

For a moment I stood at the front window and watched her tears flow and her shoulders shake. But the second I came through the door, careful not to let it slam behind me, she straightened her back, wiped her eyes and tried to smile.

"What's wrong, Grand?" She just shook her head without saying a word, thrust her wrinkled hankie into the bodice of her gingham housedress, rose from her chair and headed for the kitchen. I dropped my prize on the library table and followed her. "Grand! What's wrong? What happened?" I was already crying. Uncle Jerry! I thought. Uncle Jerry!
Grand just shook her head and proceeded with my lunch. She pulled a cube of cheese from the cooler, spread dollops of partially colored margarine on sliced bread and started two melted cheese sandwiches.

"Grand, please!"

She lit the gas and plopped the fat coated bread into the skillet. Usually she sliced the bread diagonally and waited for the grease to sizzle before adding the sandwich. "Our leader is gone," she said, finally turning to me. As soon as the words were out, her tears started again.

"What do you mean, Grand? You mean President Roosevelt?"

She nodded. "Gabriel Heater broke right into the middle of the Kate Smith Show to give us the news."

"But, Grand. I thought you hated President Roosevelt."

She pulled her hankie from the front of her housedress and daubed her eyes. "Sunny, I just don't know what we're going to do."

My mother had said almost the same thing a year earlier, when we found out that Daddy had deserted us and already married another woman. My fear deepened. "Uncle Jerry?" I grabbed at her hand. "Grand! What about Uncle Jerry?"
She blinked hard, shook her head, bent over and pulled me to her. "I'm sorry, Sunny," she said. "I didn't mean to give you a fright. It's not about our Jerry. He's still okay. At least as far as we know." She gave me another hug. "Knock on Wood," she added, as she tapped me on the head and tried to smile.

I didn't understand. While I ate my sandwich and drank my milk I tried to figure out why she was so upset, but she said she couldn't explain it because she hadn't figured it out herself, and that I should hurry and eat so as not to be late getting back to school. Five minutes later, just before heading out the door, I asked again why she was crying for a man she'd never even voted for, but she just shook her head again and said, "I don't know, Sunny. Maybe I was just used to him, you know, kind of like an old shoe. But he was our leader, and now we don't have one. And the war... and the war..."

Anxious to hear what Miss Sanders had to say about the President's death, I hurried back to school. I was worried about Grand. Mom always said that Grand was the tower of strength for the whole family. But now she was crying and I knew that strong people aren't supposed to cry. Was Grand fibbing about her tears? Was Uncle Jerry really okay? Just this past year three women on our street had become gold star wives or mothers. Last June, on her twentieth birthday, Dorothy Mackay had lost her husband on the Normandy beachhead. And just last month two inseparable, eighteen year old Marines who had grown up next door to each other were killed on Iwo Jima. As the war dragged on and casualty lists lengthened, more and more families found it harder to ignore the question, "Will we be next?" But Not until I returned to school that day did I understand why Grand was crying.

As soon as I entered the school grounds, I sensed the fear. Nobody was playing. Students were clustered in small groups, some talking quietly; others, mostly girls, were crying. Some of the kids hadn't returned from lunch, while others, who had eaten in the cafeteria, had left for home.

Almost as soon as we returned to our classrooms, Miss Anderson, the principal, called a special assembly. Miss Anderson was a retired principal who had been called back to replace Mr. Geddis, a veteran of the Great War who had been called back into the Navy. Miss Anderson always wore black. She stood behind the podium on the stage, tried to speak two or three times, finally seemed to pull herself together and said, "Dear students, our beloved country has suffered a great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss." She talked about President Roosevelt and what a great leader he had been, first in getting us through the Great Depression and then in leading us through this terrifying war we were finally winning.

"Not one of you children can remember a president other than Roosevelt. It is as if one of the few certainties this world can offer has been torn away from us. Right now the whole country and much of the world is wondering, ‘What now? What will happen to us now?'"

Then she talked about hope and prayer and how important they were, and about the vice-president, a man named Truman, who just three months earlier had been a senator from Missouri but who now automatically became president, and how God and all our generals and admirals and the Congress would be there to help him lead us to victory against the vicious Japs. Then she cancelled school. But as we stood up to leave, she rapped on the podium and added: "And please, go home and pray for our new president. He will need the praying. And so will we," she concluded. "So will we."