Saturday, January 06, 2007

Adrian DeVries (1919 - 2007)

My grandfather, Adrian DeVries, passed away this morning at Covenant Village of the Great Lakes, Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan. He had been fighting aspiration pneumonia for some time and had been hospitalized for eight days over the holidays. To make him more comfortable, he was returned to his home at Covenant Village under the care of Hospice.

I am happy for him that he is at rest, and reunited with my grandmother, his parents, and siblings. He was a World War II veteran, like my other two grandfathers. Grandpa DeVries was my maternal step-grandfather, but we never thought of him as a "step." He raised my mother, who was three years old at the time he married my grandmother (Mom was calling him "Daddy" when he and Grandma were still dating). He planned to legally adopt my mother, but her biological father wouldn't hear of it. He never treated her any differently than his son or daughter, and he walked Mom down the aisle when she married Dad.

Eventually, I'll add his story to my AnceStories website.

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