Guns and Guts

The Greatest Man I Have Ever Known

April 22nd, 2009

My grandfather, Morris Byrom died last Thursday and we buried him in Bowie, TX yesterday afternoon. Yesterday was a very tough day. I finally realized that I will never see him again in this lifetime. That hurts my soul very deeply. Our Pa, as we grandkids called him, was the best man I have ever known.

I struggle to write anything about him, because I lack the skill to describe not only how much he meant to my family, but what a genuinely good and loving person he was. To say that he was a good man is missing it. He was a great man. A man that spent his whole life serving God, and a man that worked very hard to support his family.

While talking about him over the weekend we all came up with some of the same points. None of us have ever heard Pa say a cuss word, and as far as we all know he never drank a bit of alcohol, or smoked a cigarette. He wasn’t a judgmental teetotaler either. He just chose, at a very young age, to be the best Christian man he could be, and carried through with that throughout his life. He was not a perfect man of course as no one is, but he always strove to be as close to it as possible.

Pa worked for several different Ford dealerships throughout his life. He was a long time parts manager. The man forgot more about automobile parts than I will ever hope to know. Back in the 50s, before computers were available he actually had every Ford part number memorized. If you came in and told him you needed a wheel cylinder for a ’52 Ford truck, he would know exactly what it was and were to find it. Amazing really.

My Pa, worked hard to support his family. He was never a rich man, but earned an honest living, and always did a fine job, even when he was in terrible pain.

He worked as a parts man for his entire adult life. After retiring, he even worked part time at a dealership selling Ford parts, until he was physically unable to do so. Pa was a giant of a man. He was 6’5”, and weighed over 300 pounds. His hands were huge, and believe me, if you did wrong you found out just how huge they were. 

The hardest thing for me over the last several years was seeing him in a weakened state. He had diabetes and suffered from many chronic health problems. The last several years of his life were spent in pain, and having to rely on others for everything. It had to have been a terrible experience for him. He spent his whole life being the strongest guy around.

One of his lifelong friends told the story yesterday of Pa playing football with them as kids. He was so strong the only way they could get him down, was to trip him. He would just carry several guys on his back if they tried to stand up tackle him. Pa had been known to lift up ends of cars from time to time, when his jack wasn’t handy in his younger years.

My Pa, was the strongest man I have ever known. He never used his strength to hurt others however. I believe the man would nearly have let you whoop him, before he would do anything about it. Say something to his wife or one of us kiddoes on the other hand, and you would have had a real problem on your hands. Of course as big as he was, there weren’t many that tested him.

As strong as he was, his most enduring and memorable quality was probably his gentleness. He was a real gentle giant. Many described him as a teddy bear. Pa had a very tender heart, which I inherited. He was not afraid to cry in front of others if he was overjoyed or extremely sad. At the same time he never complained about any situation he found himself in really.

He was very, very tender with us grandkids. We knew he loved us, and would have walked through fire for us. We also knew that he loved us enough to discipline us if need be. Of course, it hardly ever came to that. We knew where the boundaries where and didn’t cross them too often.

As a child, everything we did together was fun. He made it fun. I used to ride with him on a delivery route to Corsicana once a week, and he managed to make a boring day of riding in a delivery van fun for me. He always made sure that I was enjoying myself.

Fun came easy for him, because he had a great sense of humor. Pa was a consummate practical joker. He lived for the prank, and pulled them off well. They were never mean-spirited or intended to embarrass anyone though. Always, just in good fun. He loved telling clean jokes, and had great delivery.

His voice, had a great booming quality to it. This, he came by honestly. Our family has been a bunch of loudmouths for generations. You know when a group of us arrives, and we all tend to talk over others if more than one conversation is going on. Eventually it reaches a crescendo, to the point that we have been warned about it if we are in a public place.

Pa used his pipes to sing. He may not have had the best voice in the world, but it was very powerful, and he always sang with a lot of emotion. You could feel his appreciation for our Lord, when he sang songs about Him. He used this talent to lead the singing in many of the churches he attended over the years.

My grandfather, was a mighty man of God. He was a devoted Christian, and walked the walk. He was almost generous to a fault. The man would literally give the shirt off his back, to help someone, whether he knew them or not. There are countless stories of him helping people fix their cars with parts he paid for, and free labor when they could not afford to hire a mechanic or buy parts.

He went to church every time the doors were open, and was a fine example of what a Christian father should be. Pa was more of a man than I may ever be. This brief rambling can’t hope to capture what his life was, and what he did for our family and others, but it will have suffice for now.

I already miss him dearly, and the pain I feel for his loss is something that hopefully time will be able to heal.

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