To me, a Harris Tweed jacket is the kind of thing you should be able to have in your closet years from now – possibly it was your father’s jacket or, even better, your grandfather’s jacket.
I spent summers with my mother’s parents in Arkansas, where religion felt very present. My grandmother was Baptist, and my grandfather was Methodist. Double Southern whammy.
The thing that I hate the most is when people have prejudice – when they see me as the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini and not as Alessandra. That, really, I don’t like. I didn’t know my grandfather. I am me.
My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina – well, both grandfathers were born in the South.
It’s funny, if you’ve ever met my grandfather, he’s probably one of the most even-keeled men you’ll ever meet.
When I am an old man, I will tell my grandchildren bedtime stories about when I won the Champions League, hopefully when I won the World Cup, but most of all, I will tell them that their grandfather used to play with Lionel Messi.
When my grandfather was born, there was no healthcare. There were no airplanes. There were no boats. There were no trains. There were no communications. No Internet. No widespread knowledge. It will be a completely different world but a much better place in a hundred years.
My grandfather was a healer, and he used matches often. Once, he burnt a wart off my finger and then rubbed the ash deep into it, and it never did come back. When he worked at a factory, people would line up next to his truck to be healed. He died before he could teach us any of his secrets.
My grandfather is the greatest man I’ll ever know.
My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the century. He was killed in the line of duty. My father, who was 16, was the oldest son, so he had to quit school and go to work to support his mother.
My grandfather worked with charities his whole entire life, and we grew up living with him. He always told me about the other side of the world and everything that’s going on.
The Mississippi of 1920 was an exceptionally dangerous place for Black people. But my grandfather deeply believed in helping create opportunities to African-Americans to lift themselves up to create a better life for their families and doing everything possible to bring his people together.
My grandparents used to pray five times a day, but they were quiet about their own thing. Completely liberal day by day; my grandmother was a social worker and my grandfather was an engineer, but they never talked about religion. My entire life I couldn’t remember one conversation I had with them about religion.
My paternal grandfather Rustom Mehta had a huge influence on me because of his ethics and his values.
In the movies, I loved Errol Flynn whether he was playing a soldier or a pirate. I dug pirates. In fact, my first exposure to live performances was when my paternal grandfather took me to a D’Oyly Carte performance of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ which impresario Sol Hurok imported from London. I loved every minute of it.
I always think of my grandfather as the original foodie. He was the slowest eater. He savored everything. Even when everyone was gone from the table, he was still eating.
All the kids – well, I don’t know about the girls in the family, but all the boys – worked in my grandfather’s office in the summers and maybe on weekends once in a while, so they saw how he operated. They saw how he treated people. They saw the kinds of people he rubbed elbows with.
Smoking-related heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather died in their early 40s.
The truth is that my grandfather was quite wealthy, a shipbuilder.
Both of my grandfathers were in the service. It’s one of those things that you can’t be thankful enough for.
I grew up hearing stories about how my maternal grandfather had put himself through engineering school in New York City. He saved money by walking down to a gas station once a week to take a shower. When I applied to college, both education and investment value were important to me.
My maternal grandfather was born in Yorkshire in England but was contracted to work for a company who had a base in Colombia. So they moved across to Santa Martre, and they liked it very much. It was a sunny place with beaches and a seafront, so they never went back to England and preferred to stay in Colombia.
When I left my home to become an actress, my father didn’t give me a single penny. I struggled a lot, and they had no idea what I went through. My grandfather even asked me to drop my surname when he learnt I was joining films.
When I was a little girl, my grandfather, who I was very close to, used to grow yellow roses. He had yellow roses growing all the way up his drive.
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.
We need to prove to American voters, particularly independent voters who gave us this opportunity to lead, that this is not your grandfather’s tax-and-spend Democratic Party.
I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded.
My dad was a Marine, my aunt is still in the Navy, and my grandfathers both served. So, it’s a huge honor for me to represent my country in any way I can.
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.
I had the lunchbox that cleared the cafeteria. I was very unpopular in the early grades. Because I hung out with my grandfather, I started to bring my lunchbox with sardine sandwiches and calamari that I would eat off my fingers like rings. I was also always reeking of garlic.
My grandfather’s family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents, which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.
I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.
My father was an officer in the Army, and my grandfather served in World War II, and I am so proud of their service. I’ll always do whatever I can to support our troops.
I used to just daydream all the time about being in movies, from the age of, like, four onwards. I would sit down and watch movies with my father and my grandfather, and always pretended that I was in the stories.
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 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on.
I remember, as a kid, my grandfather would grab my temples and say, ‘You’ve got to focus, Jake. You’ve got to focus.’
In the early ’50s, my great-grandmother and grandfather raised a baby gorilla named Bobo who wore clothes and played with the neighborhood kids.
Well I’m a third-generation musician. My Grandfather’s a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I’m a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician ’cause I was born into the family.
My late grandfather, rest in peace, he was the biggest Knicks fan and he always told me I’d play for the Knicks, so it would mean a lot for me to play for the team.
My grandfather was from Aberdare. He was a coal miner who emigrated and then continued mining in Pennsylvania.
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.
My grandfather has a whole lot of respect for Coach Carroll and the way he handled himself and the contributions he made to the 49ers organization.
Our family was like no one else’s. My schoolfriends had fathers and grandfathers and uncles who did things, but in my family, women had been the doers.
Growing up in Chadds Ford, Pa., I shuttled between studio space in my parents’ house and my grandfather’s studio just up the hill. It was a solitary childhood, but I loved it.
I had lost my grandfather just a month-and-a-half before I made my debut. I was suddenly scoring runs and getting into the fray. It was a very trying period for me. I was happy as well as sad.
My father was always respectful to my grandfather. I really wanted that to be known because I never saw him disrespect my grandfather, and I never saw them have a cross word.
Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don’t know any smokers now, not even my mom.
