I'm a proud supporter of the Pan-Mass Challenge because it is leading generator of cancer research funding and a powerful reminder of the importance of the cause. All proceeds for the ride are given to support the Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's tireless commitment to finding a cure.
We all have stories of how cancer has affected us. It's taken two of my grandparents, one while I was in the sixth grade and the other before I was born. While both are inspirational to me in their own right, stories about the latter--my Grandpa Jim--have always had a particular effect on me. He's been a sort of silent role model throughout my life, and I'd like to think my vision of him has shaped me into the man I am today.
As an extension of my story, I've copied below a speech (italicized below) I made in high school in 2011. My school required that all students give a speech about a topic of their choosing to their entire class every year, so I chose to tell my class about my grandfather's life and his influence on me. Please take the schmaltz as a gesture of my interest in eradicating cancer--I hope you'll help support me on my Ride!
When my grandfather graduated from high school, three roads lay before him. He could sign a contract to catch for the Brooklyn Dodgers, or accept a full scholarship to Worcester Polytechnic Institute and play baseball there, or stay in Chicopee, Massachusetts and get a job as an electrician. Guess which option he chose!
Mr. Burke, Father Arens, Members of the Faculty, Fellow Students, and Invited Guests, in both the flesh and the spirit: James Edward Delisle was born on September 30, 1937. He married in 1958, when he was 20, and he had two children before his 22nd birthday in 1960. He died on June 20, 1989, 5 years, 8 months, and 10 days before his third grandson would be born. I like to think that I am similar to him in as many ways as possible. He attended a Catholic high school very similar to St. Sebastian’s, and during the summers he earned his money working with children, just like me. His sister was his only sibling, just like my sister Caroline is mine. He stood a modest 5’ 11”, my current height. In fact, his old sport coats, like the one I’m wearing now, fit me perfectly. When I wear them, I cannot stop thinking that he once wore them too. My mom often suggests that I remove the outdated white buttons and sew on some sleek, black ones. “No,” I tell her. “I like it the way it is.” I wear his clothing in the same awestruck reverence that a baseball fanatic would cradle a Babe Ruth-signed baseball. It makes me feel as if I could be as great a man as he was, but I know I have a long way to go. Maybe one day I can share his undying devotion to his family, his work, and, above all, to God.
Jim was a remarkable athlete overall, but his best sport was baseball. A stellar catcher and four-year captain of both his American Legion and high school baseball teams, he attracted considerable attention from recruiters and scouts of all sorts, and, consequently, received many offers to play baseball for both college and professional teams. The best of these offers were the two from the Dodgers and WPI. From what I am told, this decision was an easy one. He chose to stay at home and become an electrician because, in doing so, he would be able to stay closer to the people he loved and marry his girlfriend of five years, Elaine, significantly earlier.
Grandpa Jim was a holy man. So dedicated was he to God and Catholicism that his own mother firmly believed that he was destined to become a priest. Every morning, before work, he rolled out of bed onto his knees and prayed the rosary. He attended church every weekend, rain or shine, and he wore a crucifix every day around his neck. I was so inspired by his love and fear of God that I took James as my confirmation name.
You might say he was meant to be an electrician. His family was as full of electricians as Marisa Tomei’s family was of mechanics in “My Cousin Vinny.” Coming from a family full of electricians, his skill could be traced to his genes. He made a deal with Paul D’Amour, the founder of the Big Y grocery chain, and personally wired the first store in the family-run franchise. He also did the wiring for the new Chicopee public schools, taking his time in both jobs to make sure everything was done well. People who knew him tell me the pride he took in his work was incomparable. He did the job right the first time, and he would make sure it was done right, even if it took all night. I hope that I too can be this diligent with my work.
It was this work ethic, arguably, that eventually led to my grandfather’s downfall. Working on the wiring for a project late one night, Jim went to turn off the electrical current so that he could replace a defective wire. To do this he had to walk down a long corridor and turn off the power to the entire wing of the building. When he returned to his work after toggling the power, he began to replace the wire of this circuit, a circuit vital to the electricity in the building. As he sliced into the massive wire, an untamed jolt of electricity surged up his arm, propelling him across the room and shoving his head against a thick metal pipe. Someone had turned the power back on. He drove home that night with a splitting headache. Shrugging the major injury off, however, he returned to work the next day as if nothing had happened. A year later, doctors would cite this instance as the moment at which the development of his brain tumor began, and a few months thereafter, his friends and family gathered ‘round the casket and cried, feeling the very same jolt jump through their souls.
I often ponder what it would have been to know him. What would he have looked like? What would he have sounded like? What would it be like to play catch with him? What could he have taught me? What stories now wash away into the ebb of memory? Mournfully, I will never know the answers to these questions. Perhaps it is just that; maybe his greatest influence has come through his death. Perhaps I would have taken him for granted should I have had the opportunity to meet him in the flesh. And to me, he isn’t even dead. He is alive, but he is alive in the way that Frankenstein’s monster was alive—as a living collage formed from other people’s memories and not really as monstrous as people would believe originally. In his novel To a God Unknown, John Steinbeck wrote, “One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead.” My grandfather has affected me, his memory lives in me, so he cannot be truly dead but lost beyond a semi-permeable threshold. Deep down, though, I know that he is buried six feet under in a family plot in a cemetery in Chicopee, but I can feel his heavenly influence. Many times have I felt a strange urge to do something kind that I would not have otherwise done, and I attribute this to him. He has become a role model for me, even though I do not truly understand the role he played.
There were 800 people at his funeral, and I was not one of them. 800 people, some of whom were his dearest friends, some of whom were relatives, others were mere acquaintances, and still others were people whose lives he had touched remotely. None of these people were me, and this is what gets to me. I wish I could have known him, but I know this cannot change. I can now have but two hopes in this regard: First, I can hope to be like him, to emulate him in every positive way, and to reflect well upon the honor of his name, and Second I can anticipate seeing him in heaven. Each of these aspirations is equally exciting to me. I am glad to have a source of inspiration so great in my life, constantly providing an impetus to push me forward. I know that, with such a tremendously positive influence, I will continue on my journey with great zeal to be the best man, father, friend, brother, uncle, grandfather, and what-have-you that I can possibly be, and I have Grandpa Jim to thank for this.
Thank you.
