I grew up on a farm and my grandfather quit school when he was 12, but when it came to common sense and animals, he was the smartest person I've ever met, before or since. He taught me that to touch an animal is an earned privilege. It's not a right.

I remember meeting Roger Moore at my grandfather's house as a young boy and being impressed because I was such a big fan of '007.' But I was young, and I didn't have a perception of what celebrity was or who my grandfather was... I still don't, really.

Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it. Countless people tell me, 'I got into wrestling because my grandfather watched it.' It was always there.

My dad's side of the family ... they're a real bizarre bunch, going back to the original colonies. That side's got a real tough strain of alcoholism. It goes back generations and generations, so that you can't remember when there was a sober grandfather.

Some people assume I'm a spoilt trust fund kid who's never had to work for anything, while others think the best of me because of the good experience they had with my grandfather. It's difficult to digest the fact that they may never see me for who I am.

Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

Actually, if you listen to the vocals on my grandfather's records, you will hear we sound similar. We both sound kind of dry. We have a dry voice, and we both love harmony - he was a man of harmony, I'm a man of harmony. I think it just runs in our blood.

The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs of his books. After he died, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave his books away, and his poems were lost.

I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.

My mother was actually born in Ohio but raised in West Virginia where her family had a laundry. She has a West Virginian accent. My father was born in China, but he's the son of an American citizen. My paternal grandfather was born in San Francisco in 1867.

I was interested in public service, and looking back at my father, my grandfather and two great-grandfathers, well, yeah, that's what they did, too. And I think public service, like journalism, done right is a really honourable, really important profession.

I confess that as a young boy, Sunday was not my favorite day. Grandfather shut down the action. We didn't have any transportation. We couldn't drive the car. He wouldn't even let us start the motor. We couldn't ride the horses, or the steers, or the sheep.

When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.

Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life - I don't mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.

Some say there is no uniquely Canadian identity, that our multicultural fabric is too varied to establish a common thread. I disagree. My grandfather came to a country that celebrates diversity, embraces strife with compassion and respects selfless idealism.

I was lucky I had a mom who had seen it all. From seeing my grandfather march in the Civil Rights era, she understood the depth, character, and stability you need to go through racism. She taught me not to accept it to but deal with it and be better than it.

My dad's an artist, and my grandfather paints - he's not a painter; my grandfather's a butcher - but he does a lot of crafts, stained glass, painting, that stuff. There is art in our family, and I was an art major in college along with being a theater major.

The Alzheimer's Association is what I am passionate about. My grandfather had it. My mom has it. It's a horrible disease, and with our aging population, it's a growing problem. It's terrible to lose your brain and your power to be conscious or in the moment.

I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do was eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, 'Those hands dug freedom for me.'

I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.

I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.

I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.

I think young generation is always better than last generation. No matter you like it or don't like it. My father said, 'Jack, I'm so good, you'll never be' - but I'm better than him. My father is better than my grandfather. My children will be better than us.

The Bible that I will take my oath on reminds me of the 100th anniversary of the end of the war to end all wars. It was a Bible taken into battle by my wife's grandfather who had probably never ventured beyond three or four counties in North and South Carolina.

Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.

My great, great grandfather, Michael O'Hanson, fled the impending potato famine of Ireland and arrived in America in the early 1840s with his bride, Bridget. They headed for Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and a mecca for Irish-Catholic immigrants then.

The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power - and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor.

I bring a copy of 'Dracula' with me wherever I go, the book. It's my favorite book in the world, it's absolutely incredible. My great-great grandfather was the guy who printed the first edition, so he's the first person to ever put 'Dracula' on the written page.

My family's business was actually an amusement park in New Orleans. My grandfather had started that, and my grandmother was a dance maven in New Orleans. It was just the theatricality and the Mardi Gras and the pageantry that I fell in love with at an early age.

I was fortunate to have a grandfather who was an optometrist. Vision therapy was something that we routinely did to strengthen our eyes and give us better focus. I was fortunate that he could teach me techniques that are still paying dividends for me to this day.

I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather's block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.

My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean... For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.

I am lucky because I can - and I like to - mix the beautiful Caraceni jackets I inherited from my grandfather with a pair of Tsubi jeans or wear a favorite pin-striped suit from him for more formal occasions. I'm crazy about pinstripes and vintage fifties fabrics.

My grandfather pioneered exploration of what he called 'our water planet,' then my father sought to understand the human connection, and now, as part of the third generation, I'm dedicated to not only raising awareness but also to empowering people to take action.

[My grandfather] was very, very fortunate that he was never trapped in a mining cave-in. But he lost his brother in a mining disaster on a shift that he wasn't working. And he was in a collapse where his brother-in-law was killed very near him in the same section.

I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, where Bonnie and Clyde were from, so when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to drive me past the Barrow Filling Station. At my elementary school, there was a barn outside that they used to say was a Bonnie and Clyde hangout.

My father Ted fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany during World War II. My grandfather survived the horrors of the trenches in World War I. I truly believe that one of the E.U.'s greatest achievements is that it has kept its members out of conflict in Europe.

For a southern belle, my grandmother was remarkably modern. She threw my grandfather out, for one thing - some kind of argument about bourbon whiskey - shortly after the birth of their third child, and then went back to school to get herself a teaching certificate.

Every business decision I ever made I learned from my grandfather Papa Sam. He moved here from Russia when he was a boy. He worked his way up selling newspapers and ladies' handbags, and eventually, he became Cadillac Sam, one of the biggest car dealers in Chicago.

In 1957, which is now 57 years ago, my grandfather and then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi welcomed Prime Minister Menzies as the first Australian Prime Minister to visit Japan after World War II and drove the conclusion of the Japan-Australia Agreement on Commerce.

My father fought on the side of the Central Powers, as a soldier in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army, my maternal grandfather fought in the British Army, on different sides, and both were so traumatized by the experience that they never talked about it.

I always picture my grandkids looking at their grandfather and saying, 'My grandfather was the last or the first to do something.' There's nothing like setting goals and watching yourself get there, accomplishing that goal and putting your name to a part of history.

After my grandfather's plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.

That was kind of scary. You got the sense as a little kid that you might be at risk now, and then you're like, 'Why are we at risk? It's because my grandfather is in charge of all of this.' You can't really realize the magnitude of a job like that when you are eight.

The house I was born in in Somalia was right next to a big market. A lot of beggars or panhandlers would be in front of our house constantly, and my grandfather and grandmother would always invite them in to have food with us and have them take whatever was left over.

Studying my grandfather's life and legacy has shown me what it takes to be a good public servant. Curiosity. Compassion for others. Humility. Determination to stand tall for your beliefs in the face of opposition. No one believed these things more than my grandfather.

I lived on the Greek side of Cypress, and I think that's also where my interest in politics really started to come alive. It was the first time that I was told I couldn't go somewhere: My grandfather's house is on the Turkish side, but we were not allowed to go there.

When my grandfather was a journalist for the Detroit Tigers, he dressed the part. I mention it always to our local media: sport coat, tie, very professional and a nice cap on his head. And they also developed very close friendships with the players and staff traveling.

I've just always been a coin collector, ever since my grandfather had some ancient coins that he passed down to me, it's just always been something. I love collecting coins from around the world in my travels but I they don't really do anything useful anymore, I guess.

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