Remembering Grandy

 

Asheville High School baseball team, 1912.

The tall kid in the back is my grandfather, George Wallis. Marsden (his 3rd gen namesake and my brother) and I called him Grandy. He helped me find 4-leaf clovers, let me win now and again at checkers (still have the board and the checkers), and had a cat named Stanley Musial.

He accepted the position of Farm Manager at Biltmore Estate in 1925, a short time later becoming manager of Biltmore Dairy Farms. Under his leadership, Biltmore Dairy became one of the largest and most successful operations in the country. He developed their prize-winning Jersey herd.

I love him because he's my grandfather, but I deeply admire him for his tenacity in keeping the Dairy operating at its high level even as most of the men who worked for him went off to serve our country in WWII. Keeping western Carolina supplied with nutritious dairy products under such trying circumstances broke his health, but he was the kind of person who saw need, assessed what had to be done to fulfill the need, and ... just did what had to be done.

Recently, I chanced to meet a man whose father had a small dairy operation that supplied Biltmore Dairy. He actually had memories of my Grandy! It was a nice connection to make.

Born on this day in 1894.