17/03/2024
Many of you have seen my annual St. Patrick’s Day post about my Grandpa Heasty, who came from Ireland when he was 21. I HAVE ADDED SOME NEW DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM , AND SOME PICTURES this year, along with the the original information. He really did live an amazing life. The American Dream.
My Grandpa, Humphrey Heasty, came to the United States from Ireland in 1926, when he was 21 years old. He was the fifth youngest of 14 children. He was the only one who came to the United States and one of the few that left Ireland. He started Heasty Fine Foods in downtown Chicago and lived there in the midst of the entire Capone era. In fact, he was 4 blocks away from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre when it happened. He truly lived the American immigrant dream. He was very hard-working and innovative. When IGA came in and drove all of the small grocery stores out of business, he eventually learned how to do something else and - in his early forties, never having ever built anything before, he became a prolific home builder in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Within 10-15 years, he was pretty wealthy . In 1960 - when he was 55 and virtually retired - he, my Grandmother, my Mom, and my uncle all moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Grandpa Heasty was proud to be Irish, certainly, but he was even more proud to be an American. And grateful to this country. He only went back to Ireland twice, (he was on the first-ever direct flight from Chicago to Dublin, Ireland) Most important, he was a committed follower of Jesus Christ. He always told us to ask God if we needed wisdom.
Some NEW DETAILS this year: 1) Grandpa had an unusual way with animals. At different points, he had herds of Shetland ponies, some Clydesdales, and all sorts of animals. He had a white horse he had trained to rear up and paw the air (like Silver from the Lone Ranger). One time, he got too close, and the horse accidentally flattened his nose against his head. Grandpa went to the doctor, and of course the doctor wanted to let the swelling go down before he did anything. Being a tough Irishman than he was, grandpa Heasty said “ forget that!” So he grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers, shoved them up his nose, and wrenched his nose back in place! He had an absolutely unreal tolerance for pain. When he was in his late 70s, a friend accidentally ran over him in Grandpa Heasty’s own pickup truck! He was in the hospital for a bit, but somehow he survived. Another time, in his 70s riding out on the hundreds of acres with his brush hog, he ran over ground hornet nest, and they stung him pretty badly. But he didn’t complain.
2) Grandpa Heasty loved land. He owned ..probably thousands of acres in the Fayetteville area at one point. In the mid 60s, not long after they moved there from Wisconsin, he had bought hundreds of acres that included that included a hill. Well, a family of hillbillies/mountain people lived up in the hills for a while, I guess 🤷♂️ …maybe generations? They did not like him coming out to his own property. One of them grabbed a large gun and shot at or near my grandfather - a huge bullet, that lodged in the fender of the car. We had that bullet around our house for decades.
3) Even though he had only a third or fourth grade education, he did very well in the stock market, and really liked it. I remember him showing me stock trading in the newspaper in the 1980s. He was a very generous person.
4) He and my grandmother lived out on the farm outside of Fayetteville until their late 80s. Finally, one time he had a heart attack and drove himself and my grandmother into Fayetteville to the hospital. He ultimately had to sell that farm, with my Mom’s great help, and move into an assisted living place near my parents’ in Tulsa. My grandparents were 87 and 88, but he went out and secretly contacted a real estate agent - - to look for some land and and a house in the Tulsa area. He was going to move them out of there! 🤣. He lived to be almost 93.
