Grandpa Kenny

It’s been hard for me to come up with that one defining moment with a specific memory of my Grandpa. The truth is that there are so many wonderful things that we shared in this life from long ago camping trips to recent walks to the park.

My Grandpa had a wonderfully unique way of indulging my imagination. One winter at the cabin in Irons, I woke up to a note from Big Foot. Really? Big Foot wrote me a note? My Grandpa had been telling me stories of the Sasquatch that lived in the woods around the Manistee River. Grandpa said he talked to him once, and that Big Foot told my grandpa that he was watching me grow up. He would always say “She’s a good little girl - That Jamison.”

I wasn’t completely convinced of the story yet, but the note was quite satisfying. However, the deal breaker is when Grandpa told me to look outside on the deck. There were footprints in the snow....Big Foots foot prints.

For years, I wholeheartedly believed that story. When I look back, I realize how silly and obvious the signs were...foot prints shaped like a pair of snowshoes, and the unmistakable Ken Winstrom handwriting. The day I realized it was Grandpa who wrote that note, and Grandpa who made the footprints in the snow, I knew exactly how much he loved me.

In this story, a legacy was born. My Grandpa taught me how to love imagining and love the image of my surroundings. He gave me senses to know the fury of the waves, the beauty of the sunsets, and the sweet smell of the sassafras tree. He would point out the most interracial parts of the tiniest flower. He would notice if it was beginning to bloom...He would notice is innocence and purity. In theses moments, he loved the Creator of this flower, the Creator of the waves, the Creator of the sunsets, and the Creator of the little girl who believed in Big Foot. And in these moments, He allowed me to feel and know God in a way that I will never forget.

In loving memory,
Jamison