Happy Remembrance Day Grampa Mac 

Meet my Great Grandfather John (Jack) MacMillan, whose personality, perseverance, curiosity, creativity, humanity and grace extended well beyond the battle field and helped propel four families and three generations to success. He had left Scotland as a ships boy at a very early age, 12 or 13, and went on to sail and experience a large part of the world which set to work an insatiable appetite for knowledge that he spread till the end of his life and beyond. Now there's rumor that he participated in the Boer War. In what capacity I'm not sure, because even if he was there in his teens, that would mean he was in his late 20's, early 30's here in WWI. But what we do know is that he was in Glasgow in 1907 where he picked up a copy of Burns. The book I now have. From there he emigrated to British Columbia where he meet his life long best friend Ted, who had a beautiful (and available) sister back in England.....

AND THEY FELL IN LOVE! At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the Canadian Mounted Rifles, and stayed until the armistice sustaining a wound in the abdomen. A love letter to Grandma Mac full of humor and self deprecating jokes has a bloody thumb print at the top corner. He returned with his new wife to BC along with his best friend / brother in law, Uncle Ted to start a new life. There they had a big boy, my Uncle Jack who went on to fight in the Pacific, and a little girl, my Grandma who "would not marry until you finish collage." Something rarely heard in the 1920's and 30's. Shortly after the kids were born they moved to Seattle and bought a house on Beacon Hill that became the center for a vary large and prosperous family. There's so much more to write about this man, just the person he was and what he did, for this post. But I guess here's a little thank you for what you left behind and for being an unwitting bedrock of personality that many have been able to look back upon with immense pride. Uncle Ted was gassed on the front, and though he had serious lasting effects for the rest of his life, he never let it dampen a sense of humor that was synonymous with his name, or slow him down though the logging camps of the PNW, the shipyards, and the depression. He died shortly after I was born in 1978. My earliest memories are of Grandma Mac, she died when I was around 4 or 5, and grew up seeing tears in Grandma and Grandpa's eyes whenever there were holiday stories, or weird and funny family idiosyncrasies to tell. Grandpa Mac died in 1965. They're all laid to rest together in Tumwater Wa.

Grandpa's copy of Burns. He was a voracious reader and throughout his time in the logging camps of the PNW didn't spend what little money he made on booze or frivolities, but on an encyclopedia set. One. Book. At a time. Those sets were not priced for the working classes at the time. A whole set cost around $100 whereas a loggers wage was around 35-60 cents an hour. I still have his and Uncle Ted's sets.