Vale, Grandpa

Do not stand at my grave and weep 
I am not there. I do not sleep. 
I am a thousand winds that blow. 
I am the diamond glints on snow. 
I am the sunlight on ripened grain. 
I am the gentle autumn rain. 
When you awaken in the morning's hush 
I am the swift uplifting rush 
Of quiet birds in circled flight. 
I am the soft stars that shine at night. 
Do not stand at my grave and cry; 
I am not there. I did not die.
​- Mary Elizabeth Fry

Alfred Benjamin Powell. Grandpa. 16 September 1908 - 29 April 2017 This photo taken in 2013 at Mrs C21 and my wedding. He was 103 at the time, and proud as punch to be there.

I will not be publishing articles for the remainder of this week or next week. We had a rough weekend. On Saturday night, Mrs C21 received a phone call that her Aunt had passed after suffering a stroke and then on Sunday morning, mum rang to tell me that Grandpa has passed away.

Grandpa lived through pretty much every event of the 20th century that was important. We learned about it in history class, he can tell a story about his experience of living it. Allow me to indulge in some bragging.

Notables who were born the same year as Grandpa...

• Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig voice actor Mel Blanc
• James Bond writer Ian Fleming
• Creator of Daffy Duck, Tex Avery
• The first photographer to have an exhibit in the Louvre - Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Actress Bette Davis
• Jazz muso Lionel Hampton
• Actor Rex Harrison (who won a Tony for his role in Grandpas favourite show, My Fair Lady, as Prof. Henry Higgins)
• US President Lyndon Johnson
• Director of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago - David Lean
• The original Annie Oakley in  Annie Get Your Gun -  Ethel Merman
• WW2 Radio Broadcaster, who opened with "This Is London" Edward R. Murrow
• Oscar winning actor Jimmy Stewart
• Australian Cricketing Legend, Sir Donald Bradman

Grandpa saw five British Commonwealth monarchs on the Throne, twenty-seven Australian Prime Ministers (all of them excepting the first five), nineteen US Presidents, eight Catholic Popes, 

1908, the year Grandpa was born  saw some significant events:

• January 1 – The Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology formally commences operation
• February 11– Australia regains The Ashes with a 308 run victory over England
• May 7 – The Coat of Arms of Australia are granted Royal Assent
• August - Boys in Australia first participated in the scouting movement, within a year of scouting starting in England
• September 16th - William Durant, founded General Motors Corp on the same day Grandpa was born
• 21st September, Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham was born. A New Zealand soldier who earned the Victoria Cross twice during the Second World War: in Crete in May 1941, and at Ruweisat Ridge, Egypt, in July 1942. He was only the third person to receive the VC twice, the only person to receive two VCs during the Second World War and the only combat soldier to receive the award twice, was imprisoned in Colditz Castle, and nearly escaped.
• September 27th - The Model T Ford was built for the first time.
• Canberra was chosen as the Australian capital

Other Events During Grandpas Lifetime

• 1911: Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole. 
• 1912: Republic of China established and ends the Chinese Empire. Sinking of the RMS Titanic. Balkan Wars begin. 
• 1916: The implementation of daylight savings time. The Gallipoli Campaign fails. Battle of the Somme.
• 1917: Russian Revolution. USA join the Allies for the last 17 months of World War I. Independence of Poland recognised. The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.
• 1922: Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen's tomb. The Irish Civil War begins. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed .
• 1927: The Jazz Singer, the first "talkie", is released. Joseph Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union. World population reaches 2 billion. Australian Parliament convenes in Canberra for the first time. The BBC is granted a Royal Charter.
• 1928: Discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is established.
• 1929: Wall Street crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression (Grandpa has told me a number of stories about living through those times. One of which is that he had a job moving sand. Along with a few thousand other men, they would shove sand into a wheelbarrow from one end of a beach and take it to the other end to dump it).
• 1930: Discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh. Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi and the official start of civil disobedience in British India. 
• 1932: BBC World Service starts broadcasting. 
• 1933: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. 
• 1934: Hitler becomes Fuhrer.
• 1937: Japanese invasion of China, and the beginning of World War II in the Far East. Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The IRA attempts to assassinate George VI.
• 1938: Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year.
• 1942: Manhattan Project begins.

• 1943: Battle of Stalingrad ends with surrender of the German Army.
• 1944: D-Day landings. First operational electronic computer, Colossus, comes online
• 1945: End of World War II and the Holocaust. Death of Hitler and Mussolini. Creation of the atomic bomb, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. United Nations founded.
• 1946: First images taken of the Earth from space.
• 1948: Assassination of Mohandas Gandhi; beginning of apartheid in South Africa.
• 1949: Partition of Germany.

• 1950: Beginning of the Korean War
• 1952: Detonation of the hydrogen bomb and the first scheduled flight by commercial jet. Development of the first effective polio vaccine.
• 1953: The first ascent of Mount Everest, Death of Joseph Stalin.
• 1954: Supreme Court of the United States ends racial segregation in public schools; Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power; 
• 1957: Launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age.
• 1958: Founding of NASA, invention of the cassette tape
• 1959: Dalai Lama exiled from Tibet; first documented AIDS cases; beginning of the Vietnam War;  First images of the far side of the Moon. 

• 1960: World population reaches 3 billion.
• 1961: building of the Berlin Wall; first human spaceflight
• 1962: Cuban missile crisis, The Beatles' first record.
• 1963: Martin Luther King delivers his "I have a Dream" speech; assassination of John F. Kennedy; 
• 1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King, The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland
• 1969: Moon landings; Woodstock festival; the earliest incarnation of the Internet.

• 1970: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747.  Deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
• 1972: Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday.
• 1973: Beginning of the Watergate scandal.
• 1974: World population reaches 4 billion.
• 1975: End of the Vietnam War. 
• 1977: Introduction of the first mass-produced personal computers; launch of the Voyager spacecraft, currently the most distant man-made objects in the universe.
• 1978: Invention of artificial insulin
• 1979:Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Implementation of China's One child policy. 

• 1981: First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
• 1985: Live Aid. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union. First use of DNA fingerprinting.
• 1986: Challenger and Chernobyl disasters. Launch of the space station Mir. First close up images of the planet Uranus.
• 1987: Stock market crash of 1987. World population reaches 5 billion
• 1988: Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
• 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall; 1989 revolution and collapse of Communism in Europe. Tiannanmen Square Massacre in China. End of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Exxon Valdez oil spill. 

• 1990: Sir Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web. Reunification of Germany. Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Gulf War begins. 
• 1991:  Dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of 15 former Soviet republics. Boris Yeltsin becomes the first democratically elected leader of Russia.
• 1994: End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela. Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
• 1995: Establishment of the World Trade Organization.
• 1997: Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from UK to China. 
• 1999: Euro is established. Crisis in East Timor leads to 1400 deaths. World population reaches 6 billion.

• 2000: International Space Station begins operations.
• 2001: 9/11 attacks destroy the World Trade Center in New York. 
• 2002: Bali bombings. 
• 2003:  Space Shuttle Columbia is destroyed on re-entry.
• 2004: Boxing Day Tsunami occurs in Indian Ocean. 
• 2005: 7/7 attacks on London Underground. Hurricane Katrina kills nearly 2000 people in the Gulf of Mexico. 80,000 are killed in an earthquake in Kashmir. 
• 2006 – Australian of the Year Dr Ian Frazer develops a vaccine for cervical cancer.
• 2008: Great Recession begins. 
• 2009 – Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States
• 2009 – The Indian Space Research Organisation discovers water on the Moon.
• 2010 – Polish president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others died in an air disaster in western Russia while en route to a ceremony commemorating the genocide of Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. Investigations into the accident are still ongoing.
• 2010 - The Deepwater Horizon explosion.

• 2010 The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull 
• 2011 Queensland floods
• February 2011 Christchurch earthquake
• 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which triggered the Fukushima nuclear accident.
• April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak 
• 2011 – The Royal Wedding of UK's Prince William of Wales to Kate Middleton
• 2011 - The Leader of Al Qaeada, Osama Bin Laden was killed.
• 2011 - The Royal Wedding of Albert II, Prince of Monaco to Charlene Lynette Wittstock
• 2011 - The shutdown of the largest UK tabloid, "News of the World", after 168 years in print due to the 2009 phone hacking scandal.
• 2011 – NASA Launches Atlantis marking an end to its three-decade shuttle program.
• 2011 – Completion of the Harry Potter film series, which is currently the world's highest grossing film series.

Most of this is stuff I learned about in History classes or old textbooks. Grandpa was alive for it all; and up until a few years ago, had a collection of front pages from newspapers of a lot of these events. Grandpa has lived through it all. The wars, the Great Depression, the start of the common use of cars, the space age, the nuclear race, TV, records to tapes to CDs to DVDs...this list is just stuff I thought was interesting.

Cost of Good During Grandpas life
A loaf of Bread in 1911 was 2.4 cents, 2kgs of sugar, 9.7 cents, a dozen eggs were 12.1 cents, a 1kg leg of lamb was 8.6 cents, while a 1kg leg of pork was 11.2 cents.

Jump forward to 1965, during the"Golden Years". A loaf of Bread was 15.7 cents, 2kgs of sugar, 41.8 cents, a dozen eggs were 60.2 cents, a 1kg leg of lamb was 65.7 cents, while a 1kg leg of pork was 136.5 cents.

Jump now to 1990. A loaf of Bread was 131.3 cents, 2kgs of sugar 237.8cents, a dozen eggs were 238.8 cents, a 1kg leg of lamb was 488.5 cents, while a 1kg leg of pork was 689.8 cents.

You will be missed, Grandpa. Say hello to Grandma for me.

Grandpa meeting his Great Great Granddaughter earlier this year. He sat up and held her with a wonder and joy in his eyes. "They're incredible, aren't they?" he said.