Grandpa Joe was always the number one supporter for his grandchildren, no matter how ridiculous the endeavor.

In fact, the more ridiculous, the louder he cheered.

Drop out of college to move to Boston? He was on board. Turn down a full-time job offer to play drums in a reggae band? He bought our CD. Abandon a ten-year career to move to Tokyo? He downloaded Skype just so he could call me, even if he woke me up at 3am.

The only time he teased me was when we moved to Singapore and I became a stay-at-home dad. My visa doesn’t allow me to work here. Grandpa Joe never quite bought that excuse.

Growing up on a family farm in rural Iowa, Grandpa Joe worked from the day he could walk. I helped him edit his memoirs, titled “A Boy on the Farm.” In this tome he detailed the chores he completed before school, after school, and during weekends. He gathered eggs, picked beans, fed livestock, milked cows, etc. before moving on to more demanding tasks like hoeing the fields, cleaning manure, and assisting with the thresher.

It was quite unusual for a farm boy growing up in the post-Depression era to attend college, but Grandpa Joe did so, graduating from Iowa State University. He then spent his entire career working for the Iowa State Extension. He took the information the ag researchers were producing at Iowa State and traveled from farm to farm, sharing the latest updates and technologies with farmers.

Grandpa Joe was a people person and might not have had the temperament for solitary farm life. You took him to any restaurant and he’d meet somebody he knew, or he pretended he knew them and left with a new friend. I remember attending his retirement party, which was a raucous affair. His colleagues presented Grandpa Joe with a jar full of $100 worth of pennies—enough for him to launch his presidential campaign.

Grandpa Joe loved to debate, or start debates. He “got a kick” out of calling the Des Moines Register’s “Your Two Cents Worth” hotline. People could call this number and rant to the answering machine about whatever topic was on their mind, and the newspaper would print the best messages in the weekend edition. Grandpa Joe thought it was “a hoot” when they printed his rants, usually about farm prices or the Iowa State Cyclones.

One of my favorite Grandpa Joe memories was during his 80^th birthday party. Grandpa Joe was in his living room, glass of whiskey in hand, sitting between his older sister Effie Lee, a former Republican member of the Iowa House, and his younger sister Elinor, a liberal kindergarten teacher living in Colorado.

Somehow the topic of air-conditioned tractors came up. The sisters took up opposite opinions on the matter—were air-conditioned tractors good or bad? Effie Lee and Elinor got more and more heated as Grandpa Joe giggled and egged them on.

It was like nothing had changed since they were sitting together as kids in Adams County in that picturesque, unheated farmhouse with no running water.

It’s my belief that Grandpa Joe got his sense of adventure from his mother. The Narigons had been farming in western Iowa for three generations when Grandpa Joe was born. His great-grandfather, also named Joseph, was born in Ohio. He fought for the North in the Civil War and severely injured his arm. His brother William was killed in the same battle.

It was the elder Joseph that settled in Iowa after returning from the war, and for some reason changed the spelling of our last name from Narragan to Narigon.

Prior to Joseph, the Narragans had been farming in America before America was a country. We were refugees from Germany who arrived in Philadelphia in 1741. Having lived in Asia for well over a decade, I often get asked about the origins of my surname.

I facetiously tell them our name is “American.”

Anyway, both of Grandpa Joe’s parents grew up on farms in western Iowa. Great-grandpa Narigon loved farming. He was good at it. He worked from sun-up to sundown on Christmas, his birthday, etc.

According to her sister, Great-grandma Narigon hated living on the farm. Her sister told us that Flossie dreamed of living in the city, but she never got the chance.

Grandpa Joe left the farm the first chance he got. He made sure all four of his children graduated from Iowa State University. He encouraged his grandchildren to travel and explore the world.

We did, and Grandpa Joe lived vicariously through our travels.

I have lived abroad for 12 years. One thing no one tells you about expat life, is how many family milestones you will miss back home.

I have missed the birth of all my nieces. I missed all my cousins’ weddings. I missed Grandma Betty’s funeral.

And last year I missed Grandpa Joe’s funeral.

Grandpa Joe passed away in March 2023 at age 93 of natural causes. A veteran of the Korean War (he served in Chicago as a meat inspector), he was given full military honors at his funeral.

One self-justification for missing the funeral is that my sons were able to visit with Grandpa Joe the prior summer. He was still fairly lucid and they were able to joke around and hear some of his stories. My sons will be able to have those memories of Grandpa Joe, and they will know that he was someone who loved them.

This past month we visited Grandpa Joe’s grave at the Iowa Veterans Cemetery. My dad described the funeral to my boys, what happened and why. They were able to visit the graves of other veterans and learn about their service to our country and the sacrifices made.

We were able to say goodbye to Grandpa Joe and give him our well wishes. It was cloudy and gray when we arrived at the cemetery. The clouds broke as we left, and the sunlight shone through.

Back in the spring of 1999 I spent four months in San Diego, basically wasting time until I started my summer job in the Boundary Waters. While I was in San Diego, my step grandmother, Fran, Grandpa Joe’s second wife, passed rather suddenly from liver cancer.

It was another funeral I would miss.

Fran’s son lived in Los Angeles. Grandpa Joe borrowed my dad’s Ford Ranger to drive to Los Angeles and drop off some of Fran’s things. As payment to my dad, he drove down to San Diego to pick me up and drive me back to Iowa.

Grandpa always said he “rescued” me from San Diego. I didn’t have a dollar to my name. I had burnt through several relationships in quick succession. I was at a personal low point and Grandpa Joe came to take me home.

On the drive we stopped by Vegas for lunch where Grandpa Joe put one coin in the slot machine. We stepped out of the truck at Zion National Park in Utah. We looked at the view, got back in the truck, and continued driving.

Prior to my time in San Diego, I lived in Boston for nine months. My Boston roommate and I had no TV, no computer, nothing.

We did have a four-track recorder. We had an acoustic guitar and the conga drum Grandpa Joe gifted for my high school graduation. We used that four-track recorder late into the night, recording our jam sessions.

During our drive across America, I popped the cassette into the deck and played that music for Grandpa Joe.

He listened quietly for a few minutes. Then he said, “Maybe we should turn off the radio.”

Sometimes supporting your grandkids means telling them they should stick to writing.