Prayers sent. God Bless your family!

Praying for you & yours, my friend.

Continued thoughts and prayers my friend.

I'd like to sincerely thank everyone on here for their prayers over the last several days. My grandpa finished his time here on earth around 1:50 this morning. He died peacefully. His funeral will be on Tuesday if anyone would like to offer up a prayer or two between now and then for the repose of his soul in heaven, and for my family.

 

Thanks again.

 

 

Paul Joseph Talbert (1922-2012)

^ That is a precious picture of your Grandfather. I will offer prayers for Paul Joseph Talbert.

Losing your grandpa is tough. I feel for you CWB, but be comforted in knowing he's in a much better place!

Lord, hear our prayers; in your mercy, bring us to your place of peace and light the soul of your servant Paul Joseph Talbert, whom you have summoned from this world. Call him to be numbered in the fellowship of your saints. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

CWB, Unfortunately I just now saw this thread. I'll send up a few prayers for your Grandfather and your family.

 

May he rest in peace.

Again, thanks to everyone for your continued prayers. The last few days have been relatively nice, all things considered. The time with family was well spent and was very cathartic. Grandpa was very well liked after all the time he spent involved at his parish, working with the St. Vincent dePaul Society, carrying mail for 35 years, and being a generally warm and extroverted personality. We had a surprising number of strangers stop by his visitation to tell us about how they new him and how sorry they were to hear he had died.

My grandpa was known by many many many people to be a daredevil. Among other crazy feats, he did things like jump down off of the trusses from the L&N bridge superstructure into an open coal car on a moving train, jump out of a third story window on a dare from his older brother, take a running dive off of the bridge of his WWII destroyer into the ocean, and swim all the way underneath of his destroyer to prove that it could be done.

 

Those were all stories we had all heard him tell numerous times over the years...and all those things aside, my mom used to always insist on telling us how smart he was, often citing how he apparently made a habit of reciting passages from Cicero in Latin at the dinner table while she was growing up. He had only received a high school education (Covington Latin School '38), yet he was always very intelligent. Well interestingly enough we had a gentleman at the visitation yesterday come up and introduce himself to us as a high school classmate of my grandpa. He said that while they had attended CLS together, students were given a free period for lunch where they could either walk home, or go to the cafeteria and eat. Well a group of 3 or 4 guys had decided one afternoon that they would take their free period and all go check things out inside of St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica - located right next to the school. They were all wandering in separate areas of the church, and then the next thing he knew, he walked out into the open nave area of the church, looked up, and saw my grandpa walking along the catwalk that wraps around the uppermost level of the church wall. Right about that instant, my grandpa turned and dove out off of the catwalk, and caught ahold of one of the chandeliers that hung over the nave. They were all absolutely astonished by what they had just seen, and then were even more dumfounded when they heard him start "whispering" loudly that they needed to help him figure out how to get down. It shortly became apparent that they were going to have to go find someone to help get him down. According to this guy's estimation, by the time they found a priest and got him to come lower the chandelier, my grandpa spent the better amount of 15 minutes hanging 35 or 40 feet above the church floor.

 

Well anyway, as a punishment, my grandpa had to spend all of his lunch breaks for the rest of the year in the headmaster's office memorizing philosophy passages in Latin. ...thus the Cicero at dinner.

 

So in the words of Paul Harvey, that's how my family learned "the rest of the story".

^ Good stuff. Precious memories indeed.

Awesome story CWB. So sorry I am just now seeing this thread. Prayers to you and your family.

Prayers for your Grandfather CWB!

Our thoughts are with you CWB.

Likewise, I am now returning to this thread and my condolences on the passing of your grandfather. The story was GREAT!!! The many times I attend mass at the cathedral I always wonder what it looks like up on the catwalk.