By David Edgerton
My Grandpa, David E. Grow, was born in Glens Ferry, Idaho in 1912. His parents were James and Maude Grow. He was raised by his mother because his dad wasn't around much when he was young. He had three brothers and one sister and he was the youngest of the family.
When he was five or six, his sister had a goldfish. When he was all alone in the kitchen he snuck over and took it out of it's tank and rolled it in flour to prepare a feast. Whenhis sister, Gladys, came home she smelled grease frying and entered the kitchen to find her little brother with the tail of a floured goldfish sticking our of his top overrall pocket!
In elementary school he had a teacher who hit him on the side ogf the head with a huge geography book. She thought he was talking to another student and the force of the book sent him flying to the floor. He attended high school in Ogalla, Nebraska and was a champion pole vaulter.
After high school he left for Alaska to join his two older brothers. There he homesteaded and trapped with his brother Jim. They had cattle on the Hay Flats in Wasilla also. He joined the Navy during WWII and served in the South Pacific as a torpedo man.
In 1957 he married Jackie Slumberger Betts, my grandma. She had three girls, Sally, Judy and Glenda. Then they had three more kids, Davy, Murphy (my mom) and Mike. They enjoyed there home, garden and Canyon Lake cabin.
I was named after my Granpa Grow. When he died in 1987 I was only 18 months old, so I don't remember him. But he used to call me "Fatso Bologna". He loved nicknames, that's how my mom Gail, became "Murphy".
He would have like our cabin out in the woods. We could have gone hunting, fishing, camping and trapping together. My Grandpa loved the outdoors and so do I.