Have you ever had a hero you never met?  Mine was a trail boss for the Circle C. Riding Club. 

My grandfather is on my top five list of people that I wish I'd have met at least once.  He was the second child of nine and the one responsible for supporting his family after his father left them.  That was a high and dry moment, in the middle of the depression, when my great grandfather left town with his secretary and the payroll from his logging company.  My grandfather stepped in and went to work for a competitor while in the eighth grade and drove the trucks to transport the logs to market.  At one point he left with the circus that was in town (Bluff City, AR) and traveled with them to St. Louis.  He lost the money he had saved to send home in a card game and when the circus left town without him, he walked home over 400 miles.  He wore out a pair of shoes and learned the lesson of "If it sounds too good to be true, it is".  The only other time he gambled in his life was after quite some convincing from my grandmother to invest in a new company that stock was being offered first through employees of International Paper Co., Xerox.  For once it really was that easy but that's a story for another time. 

My grandparents grew up a few miles away from each other in the woods of Nevada County, AR, and courted each other until my grandfather, Raleigh, was drafted for service for WWII.  He left for San Diego and even though several men tried to court my grandmother, Virginia, she wasn't serious about anyone but Raleigh and when he sent a letter to Virginia for her father saying that if he let her travel out to California, he would marry her.  With the fare in the same envelope, she left the next day.  She lived with he brother that was also stationed in San Diego until Raleigh took her to Yuma, AZ and were married.  A man of his word.  They were married on March 15, 1943 and my mother was born on December 31st the same year.  

Raleigh was an MP judo expert in the army and also a truck driver.  He was captured by the enemy and was a POW in Stalag for two years.  He slept in a bathtub and ate grass to survive.  In our family whenever someone would say "I'm starving to death" the response is always "Don't let Raleigh hear you say that".  In a very low voice he would say "you don't even know hungry is".  

Saying he was fond of horses was an understatement.  He had a couple of registered American Bread Saddle horses and a Tennessee Walker that he gave my mother as a teenager.  He and my grandmother  only had one child and they also both worked.  He was a master welder for IPCo. and my grandmother was the statistician for the mill.  They had a good living and helped their families however they could from a few dollars to help raise several of the kids that had a less loving and fortunate home life.  My mother was a daddy's girl despite regular ribs from him like the time a fella' called to ask her on a date and she wasn't home.  When he told her some boy called and she asked who it was he replied "I don't know but I told him to call back - in about 4 years".  There was also the time he taught a nephew how to trim a tree from the top down by tying a rope to the boy's belt loop and having him shimmy to the top of the tree having him loop it then throw the rope back down and tying the RUNNING chainsaw to it and hoisting it up to the kid.  That boy was so proud to tell his mom what he'd been trusted to do that day but she didn't think it was too wonderful and let Raleigh have an earful of her concerns.  When the two went back out the next weekend, Raleigh simply told the boy; "There are some things we don't tell the women".  I think that's a pretty good lesson in knowing when to keep your mouth shut.  He also traded a hi-fi record player and some 45's with $50 to his cousin for a Cadillac for my moms first car - sadly, that was short lived because about a month later he traded the Cadillac for a Maytag.  When mom asked where her car was he replied "Your mom needed a new washing machine."  $100 investment traded for a $400 machine - not bad for him but sorry mom.  

He worked until he had his first heart attack in 1968 and his heart doctor, Dr. Michael DeBecky, told him he'd like to do a heart transplant but when he explained Raleigh would have to decrease his activities of yard work, hunting, and horseback riding, he told the good doctor that he'd just ride it out.  Ride it out he did until December 17, 1970.  He'd retired and did exactly what he wanted to do until that Saturday and while out squirrel hunting his heart exploded and he died doing exactly what he wanted to do.

Raleigh was only 5'7" and about 160 lbs but anyone who described him would say that he was a big man and someone they looked up to.  He only ever wrote two checks his entire life, Virginia kept the books, and one of those checks was in 1969 to buy his wife a 1.53 carat diamond solitaire ring - that he gave to her in a Hershey's box.  She cried when she saw the box from disappointment and then cried again when he slipped the ring on her finger.  I now wear the same diamond in a ring I had made for myself after my mother passed away in 2015.  

If I could take a ride down the trail with this boss, it would be heaven on Earth.  There are so many things I'd like to ask him and learn about.  All I have a other people's memories of him and their time spent together - and for that I'm grateful.  I carry his name and hope that I've made him proud - a man I never met but will always look up to.