Today is your birthday and I miss you. I miss you a lot. Your smile, your stories, your love for neapolitan ice cream.

You were born July 10, 1910. The youngest child of Benjamin Franklin Witherwax and Minerva Ruth Beardsley in Peru, Clinton County, NY.  Your married Frances Mary Stewart in 1940 and raised 7 children.

I have wonderful memories of you and think of you often, seriously daily, you and Grandma had such a profound impact on the person I am. I also tell my own dad often that just because you bought me a horse doesn’t mean he should by my child a horse. I wish you could of known all your great grandchildren. You and grandma have left us a wonderful legacy of love and the importance of helping those in need. I always recall you taking in strays. I miss the days of the adults playing poker in the farm dining room or traipsing through a cemetery with you and grandma or the day we drove to Valley Falls looking for information about Sarah Beardsley and met that man who remembered her sister Lucy and was the paper boy.

Anyway. I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I am grateful for having you in my life for my first 29 years. I love you and Miss you. Give Grandma, Uncle Leslie & Uncle Marc a hug from me.