Bill Bellan, 1983
Yesterday, I wrote a post about my Great-Grandpa Bellan because it was his birthday. Today, I'm sharing some photos of me with his son, Bill Bellan who was my mom's dad. He would have turned 99 years old today. He was born in Lorain, Ohio, but grew up on the east side of Cleveland, and graduated from East Technical High School in 1933 (see this post), and served in the Army during WWII (see this post). He worked as a printer with Penton Publishing Company for most of his career.
Grandpa Bellan passed away when I was about eleven years old, but I do have a lot of memories about him. He and my grandma watched my brother and I for a couple of years when my mom was working full-time. He would pick us up from school in his maroon Oldsmobile. He had one of those floating compass globes on his dashboard that we thought was so cool. He would bring us back to their house and Grandma would get us some food. We loved playing around by his workbench in the basement. He loved building things out of wood and there were tons of tools to look at. He would occasionally help us hammer nails into scrap pieces of wood. And he had a big metal vise that we used to just turn back and forth, opening and closing, opening and closing...
Grandpa also loved golf and he had one of those putting mats that would shoot the ball back at you if you got it in the hole, which, of course, we thought was the neatest thing ever. He also played darts with us in the basement. Yes, he let a 5 and 6 year old play with real darts. We never got hurt though, so we must have been properly supervised, right? (Guess this is probably not the best time to mention that he also frequently let us play with an old set of lawn darts a.k.a. Jarts.)
Grandpa Bellan passed away when I was about eleven years old, but I do have a lot of memories about him. He and my grandma watched my brother and I for a couple of years when my mom was working full-time. He would pick us up from school in his maroon Oldsmobile. He had one of those floating compass globes on his dashboard that we thought was so cool. He would bring us back to their house and Grandma would get us some food. We loved playing around by his workbench in the basement. He loved building things out of wood and there were tons of tools to look at. He would occasionally help us hammer nails into scrap pieces of wood. And he had a big metal vise that we used to just turn back and forth, opening and closing, opening and closing...
Grandpa also loved golf and he had one of those putting mats that would shoot the ball back at you if you got it in the hole, which, of course, we thought was the neatest thing ever. He also played darts with us in the basement. Yes, he let a 5 and 6 year old play with real darts. We never got hurt though, so we must have been properly supervised, right? (Guess this is probably not the best time to mention that he also frequently let us play with an old set of lawn darts a.k.a. Jarts.)
Here are some pics of me with Grandpa when I was a baby. I also included one of my brother and me in our sandbox, because Grandpa built it for us.
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