My mother's mother was born in Philadelphia to parents who were both from Clydebank in Scotland. I think they were okay until their house burned down in Philadelphia and the parents moved the children back to Scotland to Clydebank because things like home insurance likely didn't exist then the way they do now. So, it's likely my great Grandparents who were both born in Scotland couldn't rebuild their home and went back to Scotland never to return ever again to the U.S. However, the 11 or 12 kids all returned as far as I know to the U.S. mainly to Omaha, Nebraska where one of them and then many more of them worked for the main newspaper there in the early 1900s. My grandmother was born in 1888 and so it makes sense that about 20 or more years later when she married my grandfather in Scotland they moved along with all the others to Omaha, Nebraska. Then after my mother the youngest of 3 girls were born to them he moved the family to Seattle Washington where they all stayed pretty much until he left the family when my mother was 18 years old. Then being the youngest of the three sisters she supported her mother financially until she was 27 years old and married my father. Then my father helped support both my mother and her mother and her mother helped raise me and also lived with us too from when my mother got pregnant after she was married to my father for 2 years time. So, they were married in 1946 and I came along in 1948.
I can remember being dressed up in a brown dress suit with a tie and a trenchcoat the same color and I carried a briefcase like a gentleman. They had me trained sort of the way you might train a parrot to tell people when I was 4 what I would be when I grew up that I wanted to be a Gentleman when I grew up.
So, this is how I was raised likely to be a Scottish or English Gentleman. I was trained well by both my Scottish Grandmother and my full blood Scottish, born in the U.S. in Omaha, Nebraska mother who was born in 1919 as the youngest of three sisters in Omaha, Nebraska but then raised in Seattle, Washington. So Mom would have been 20 in 1939 a couple of years before World War II.
Then when I was 6 years old my parents were put in charge of a church in Los Angeles so we moved from El Cajon (near San Diego) to Tujunga in the greater Los Angeles Area and the church that my parents ran from 1954 until 1960 was at 1320 S. Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. So, being the son of ministers of a church also made me a Gentleman too as I was in the greeting line with my parents when the church services were over often if I was there when Sunday church was happening.
So, learning to become an actual not theoretical gentleman was I guess what actually happened to me from birth to around 12 years of age and beyond. When I look back now I see how I was trained to be kind to people, to counsel people sort of like a minister and to help people throughout my life and to save as many lives along the way as possible and maybe save their souls as well along the way.
I think my grandmother and mother succeeded and my father too in making me always a gentleman in my life even though I could get really angry sometimes too. However, I was taught to be very self disciplined by my father because he said if I got really angry and out of control that someone was going to die. So, he cautioned me at age 12 that because I was a head taller than most kids my age that I always had to be the adult in the room. I listened to him and made it a point never to start fights with others. I might finish a fight but never start one. This was a part of being a real gentleman throughout my life of rescuing those often like girls and those boys smaller than myself from bad things and bad people whenever I could.
I was sort of taught to be like a real Knight with Chivalry and all that every step of the way as I was growing up.
It's only now at age 76 that I begin to fully understand how important all this was for both me and those around me all my life now. Because I see the ruin of so many other's lives who were not gentleman and are all dead mostly now because of it.
So, I thank my mother and grandmother and father for making me a gentleman all those years ago now.
By God's Grace
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