This is James W. Tankersley, my grandfather.. In a little more than 25 years after this photo was taken, he would become my Pappa. As my Pappa he was my hero long before I understood how much of a hero he truly was. Before I could comprehend what the uniform meant or could imagine the beach in Normady he landed on at D-Day, I knew I wanted to be like this man...retired.
Seriously though I didn't see the early retirement because of health issues that nearly took him to be with the Lord before I ever met him and did take him too soon.I saw a man who loved to read and who loved me. He taught me to play gin rummy and poker. He gave me my first cup of coffee. He talked to me and treated me like I was special in a way that made me believe it. I hate the few memories of the times when I disappointed him and let him down, and while I wish he had lived longer I am grateful he didn't have to be there during my rock bottom years.
Pappa holds a special place in my memory and my heart, and he is the image I hold as my standard when. I look at the grandfather I want to be to my grandson, Baiden. But as much as a hero as he was, as wonderful a daddy he was to my mom and as perfect a grandfather as my memories speak of him, James W. Tankersley was not perfect, not even close. He had his shortcomings. He had his failures. He had his past with areas that brought him shame. There were things he wished he'd done better. There were things he wished he hadn't done at all. There were things that would have caused huge regret but didn't because God blessed him by bringing something good out of it. But that didn't matter to me. To me, he was never James or Jimmy, he was Pappa. I didn't know about all his mistakes and didn't care about the ones I knew about.
Today, he is once more my hero. I want to be like him. My Pappa didn't run from the past. In some ways he embraced it in a way that doesn't make sense to some people. He watched war movies regularly although the biggest nightmare of his life had been war. I can't explain why he would or could do that, but I understand it. I do the same thing with prison movies. That said, he didn't drag his past around with him and toss it into a room ahead of him. He didn't bring it into every conversation and interaction. The people who enjoyed interacting with Pappa didn't see a man who didn't feel he had a right to be respected or liked. They didn't see a man who felt his past and its issues disqualified him in any way from the blessings and relationships of the present.
I don't know my Pappa's shame. I know he never messed up as big and public as I have. But I know that in the time when my mother was a little girl, her parents where together via the broken road of divorce. This was a time long before divorce rates were close to 50%, before people said divorce about the same way as graduation. This was when divorce was whispered and rare and shameful. And my Mamma was my Pappa's second wife. Today that doesn't sound like any big deal, and part of me laughs at the idea of comparing that situation with being a felon. But in the 40's and early 50's, people were still moving to new towns and cities to try to hide things like divorce. Some businesses wouldn't hire you if they knew. And that was one thing that might have brought him shame that I never saw him cover himself in shame over. He just lived and enjoyed the good that God brought from what had been a bad situation.
Let us also learn from the past and enjoy the good that comes from it, but not let it disqualify us from anything that God wants to give us. We don't have to wear our shame and our past like a suit. In the words of God to Peter, "Don't call anything unclean which I have called clean." We have been made clean before our Lord, and we have the right as children of the King to live and interact with others as though there is nothing that disqualifies us from the good blessings of God, because there isn't.
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