Hillbilly Eulogy: A Farewell to Pap

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on January 31, 2021.

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My grandfather, Richard Glagola, or “Pap Paw” as I knew him, passed away this week at the age of 88. He was my childhood hero; the stuff of legend growing up. The kind of person you meet and walk away shaking your head and saying, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” And you’re right, they don’t.

He was the quintessential American; the blue-collar worker Sam Elliott narrated about in commercials about farmers and trucks—his being a 1979 Ford. The man could build or fix anything with his bare hands. It wasn’t always flawless work, but he got the job done. He grew up in coal country in southwestern Pennsylvania in the Appalachians in the midst of the Great Depression. Throughout his lifetime he was a coal miner, truck driver, farmer, machinist, and served his country in the Army in the 1950s. Later in life, though you’d never find him at the mall, he trolled the local Harbor Freight or Dollar General in the winter time wearing a red sweat suit to accompany his white beard—certain to make kids still believing in the miracle of Christmas stop in their tracks. The last thing his 2 year old great-grand daughter said to him on Facetime was “ho, ho, ho.”

He met the love of his life in high school and never looked back, faithfully loving her until his dying day, SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS of marriage. That’s something worth highlighting and celebrating in this day and age. They may not have lived a life of luxury, but rich isn’t always about what’s in the bank account. Scarcity and abundance are relative. Oh, and “Rich” was what my MeMe called him.  Their family life was filled with familiar peaks and valleys. They had 4 children, one stillborn at birth—a son, Greg, who Pap Paw finally met this week. He later knew the tragedy of burying his other son and watched a daughter battle cancer.  Life sometimes isn’t fair.

He made every man who wanted to date his daughters meet him first. And when they came inside, they were routinely met with the “shock and awe” campaign reserved for the best country singles. A family favorite includes my father walking in and seeing him sitting in his living room, cleaning his revolver, listening to Johnny Cash, cooling off from a hard day’s work on the farm before evening chores, drinking peach schnapps… in his underwear. When he lived with us for a while one summer in the mid-90s, I remember his love for us could only be met with his love for Jesus. In fact, next to his bed in our basement, he hung a white bathrobe, which he told me was his preparation for Christ’s return. A peculiar display of faith amidst the basement faux wood paneling and playroom musk, guarded by my platoon of GI Joes.

He outlived most people he knew, like his one-legged mom, my Granny, who made it to 101 before she passed, and his sister, Elaine, still kicking at 96. Aside from family though, that made it easy to tell tales of the past, with hardly anyone left to correct the record, if embellishment were necessary. These fish tales most often came out over a family game of cards, usually Rummy—and you didn’t dare piss him off by going with a “three of a kind” to scramble his runs. His stories regaled any audience with tales of sandlot baseball, high school football with leather helmets, barracks shenanigans with dynamite, and farm gaffes, all polished off with his booming voice and gregarious laugh. While often repeated, my only regret now is I can’t hear them again.  

He chewed Red Man until he lost his teeth and a while thereafter, rocked old trucker hats and wore cheap t-shirts until the front pocket wore out. And when there were too many holes in them and needed to be replaced, ever the resourceful one, he cut them up and used them for rags.  An old-school bandana was never far from reach as a sweat rag or a hankie. He kept a list, a “To-Do” list, that he wrote out and referenced daily. I never understood how a man living so far into retirement could be so damn busy. His schedule was always full, no matter how tedious. Things added in his own style of cursive at breakfast while reading the paper with his eggs, sausage, coffee, and toast.  The bread had to be present with every meal, I never asked why, but daily bread it was. I always tried my best to avoid sitting next to him at the dinner table when I was young because he loved stealing food off your plate, jokingly of course. And the meal would usually begin after the prayer, with the reminder, “whoever eats the fastest gets the mostest.”

He was tough as woodpecker lips.  His skin was like leather, large forearms, fingers like sausages, and thick, tree trunk legs. His disability later in life apparent by his gait and his bad knees, endemic of living “the strenuous life” touted by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt—his penance for a life of hard work. Not surprisingly, Pap loved Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and “spaghetti westerns,” or “shit kickers” as he called them. His accent and bluntness were also uniquely his.  Not quite southern, nor Midwestern. Appalachian for sure, but with a certain “distinction,” accompanied with a vocabulary that can only be accumulated through a lifetime of plowing, riding, driving 18-wheelers, and serving in the Army.  Terms like “goed it,” “summuma bitch,” “yins quiet down now,” and “ah shiyet” come to mind. As well as “ooo that smell” (thanks Lynyrd Skynyrd), singing “In the Jungle,” and an oft-repeated offer of “I’ll give ya fifty bucks fer it” when he saw something he liked—driving a hard bargain for an expensive car or a neighbor’s cute kids. Yet despite his coarse exterior, his heart was with his family, especially around those great-grandkids. Pride that swells like that is hard to hide, even for the most reserved stoics.  

He was a hoarder of sorts, a combination of the most useful and useless things you’d ever see. One summer I took stock of this eclectic purveyor’s “collection” in the holler, which consisted of up to 17 pickup trucks in varying states of disrepair, and a combination of over 30 push and riding lawnmowers. I swear there’s an entire wall on one of, yes, three garages or shanties dedicated to JIF peanut butter jars filled with various nuts, bolts, and screws. Easy to criticize from the outside while arriving with an empty truck bed, until you made a lap around his garage as a proud first-time homebuyer and left with enough “extra tools” to baseline your own house with a “starter kit” that would cost a mortgage payment at Lowe’s, or “Lowells” as he called it.  

I don’t remember him complaining much—entitlement was certainly not part of his persona—and reflecting on my childhood and simple times with Pap in Ohio and PA, while growing up in a blue-collar household, I can’t complain either.  J.D. Vance, closing out his most prescient 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy, spoke about his family, upbringing, and cultural inheritance, stating, “I cannot whine about it: The life I lead now was the stuff of fantasy during my childhood. So many people helped create that fantasy. At every level of my life and in every environment, I have found family and mentors… who supported and enabled me. But I often wonder: Where would I be without them?” Pap always believed in me, whether it be sports, school, or my military career. Amidst the plagues of COVID, quarantine, and cancer, he lived to see me promoted to Lieutenant Colonel—a rewarding and humbling experience, facilitated by contraptions like smartphones and Zoom, and for that I give thanks.  Where would I be without him?

Thankfulness—a quality Pap uniquely displayed which can quickly submarine today’s post-modern cultural norms like contempt, complaining, entitlement, and demagoguery. A meal never missed without a bowed head and grace, a day trip or overnight visit filled with hours of sitting, silence, and watching either the hummingbirds buzz around the feeders encircling the back porch or the Atlanta Braves on TV, his favorite team.  A simple approach to life doesn’t mean simple-mindedness. In fact, solitude is one of the most glaring omissions of today’s culture. Our inability to follow the most basic principles can be endowed to us by our forefathers if we only shut up and listen, sometimes to nothing. You didn’t get to hear the good stories right away by asking a pointed question, those came with time and patience, but they were worth it because they were the most genuine, peppered with wisdom.  Simple principles include those encouraged by Peter, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:17). As I march towards the future, with four of my own little ones in tow, I’ll acknowledge my past and embrace its lessons: love God and love our neighbors, and encourage my own to do the same, led by deeds over words.

Pap might be the type some nowadays despise, a likely candidate for the “basket of deplorables” discarded on the scrap heap of “what used to be” in the age of hyper-progressivism and hurt feelings reports. Was he a hillbilly? Probably.  Merriam-Webster describes a hillbilly as an often disparaging and offensive term meaning “a person from a backwoods area.” If you have to make a turn off of Tomcat Hollow to get to your grandparents’ home on the slope in the Appalachian foothills, you’re probably not too far off. But that’s a classification like “redneck” others coin to stereotype opponents or demean the “other” to occupy some false notion of moral or social class high ground. News flash: that doesn’t exist. As abrasive as he was sometimes, my grandpa never had many enemies in life, but if slapping a label on him makes you feel better, go ahead. The only one that ever mattered to me was “Pap.”

Today, we live in a country where there are calls for “unity,” but those are disingenuous and reserved for a place of honor in MeMe’s old compost heap not far from the rusted out trucks in the side yard. What they’re really calling for is “uniformity,” a divisive demand to accept the spoon-fed agenda the elites and ruling class want to shove down your throats—like it or not. That doesn’t sit well with those like my Pap Paw.  And you know what? He’s right.  My Pap wasn’t quintessentially American because he swam with the current, far from it. He was a man for his time because he was uniquely his own person. He was Rich, Pap, and Dad, to the people who loved him the most. And to us he was also a symbol of strength, hard work, free will, individual choice and responsibility, and self-determination: American values reserved just as much for him as it was for great leaders like the signatories of the Declaration and Dr. King.  

He was ten feet tall growing up because he was my grandfather—with all his past experiences, his baggage and stories, tragedy and triumph, his eastern European “hunkiness,” his unique accent and pronunciation of words, his schnozz and sausage fingers, and his love for his family. His strength could only be matched with his bullheadedness—he was determined to do life his way. I think the sooner we realize the current narrative of “unity” is a fool’s errand, the better off we’ll be, and accept the fact that in America, we’re not all uniform—whether it be race, creed, sex, age, origin, or ideology. Uniqueness fully tells the American story, not a demand for uniformity and ongoing political witch hunts. But our uniqueness doesn’t mean we can’t treat each other with dignity and respect, and it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t abide.  

However, it takes significant investment and empathy to know the other side, extend a hand, and hear their stories. And yes, have some thick skin to engage in candid discussion over differences rather than go to our corners, or “safe spaces.” This exceptionally American country built by the hands of my Pap and those like him, as imperfect as it may be, is still collectively ours.  We, the benefactors, stand on the shoulders of our ancestors as we try to make it better.  Remember that as you look down your nose at those who laid the groundwork for your contempt and judgment. You don’t have to like it to acknowledge the truth. You don’t have to like this eulogy either. Like it, or piss off, no matter to me.  When you got sideways with Pap, he’d threaten you with an “attitude of adjustment.” Perhaps that’s what some people need nowadays.

Where would I be without my Pap? I’m not sure, but I can say the future seems much brighter standing on the shoulders of the man who was ten feet tall as a kid. What I do know is my love for my family and my Pap isn’t going anywhere despite his passing, because candor, resoluteness, and resilience are values I learned from him, and they’re here to stay so long as I still walk this earth. That’s something you can’t cancel, unfollow, or block, because like Richard being my middle name, it’s etched in the fiber of who I am. And thank God, the one who made all of us in His image, for that blessing.

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Mike Kelvington grew up in Akron, Ohio. He is an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army with experience in special operations, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency over a dozen deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, including with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He’s been awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor and two Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in combat. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a Downing Scholar, and holds masters degrees from both Princeton and Liberty Universities. The views expressed on this website are his own and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army or Department of Defense.