Doctor Grandma

On this day in 1918, John Thomas Agnew was born to John Wesley Agnew, a bookkeeper for Monon Railroad, and his wife Mary, a feisty-minded and strong-willed woman who loved babies and telling stories. John Thomas grew up without a lot of luxury, and always excelled in school. He found a flute on the street & taught himself how to play it, later writing marches for Purdue band. As a youth, he contracted a disease that took him out of school and caused one leg to be shorter than the other. For this reason he limped the rest of his life and could not tie his own shoes, but that never slowed him down. He became Prof. of Mechanical Engineering at his alma mater, Purdue University, did research at Genl Motors in Michigan, and eventually moved his family to Philadelphia where he became Dean of Engineering at Drexel U. On weekends he was grading papers and reading but always available to his kids. He loved wearing old white t-shirts and bumming around in Natl Parks and hunting for fossils in the summer. He was a small man, a scientist at heart and agnostic but believed in contributing to the advancement of humanity. He died at age 50, as many Agnew men do, with heart trouble, just after my 16th birthday. He was my father, and I miss him.