Katie was Geoff's paternal grandmother and Claire's great grandmother.  Geoff's recollection of his grandmother, now deceased some 44 years, is that of a completely benevolent individual.  She was a woman of modest stature—perhaps five feet, six inches— tending toward plump.  She wore her hair in tight gray curls, peered through bifocals and dressed in a modest but ample wardrobe reflecting her reformed Christian upbringing in the “up-country” Perkiomen Valley of Pennsylvania.  She and her husband James (below) led a prosperous life in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Geoff and his sister called her Mom-Mom.  

Mom-Mom was a consummate practitioner of the domestic arts.  Without apology, she produced a vast output of decorative needlepoint and cross-stitch embroidery, crocheted and knitted wearables, and quilted bed coverings.  She created much of her own clothing and crafted high-fashion millinery work from the feathers of exotic birds.  Late in life, she took up oil painting and produced respectable landscapes and still life.  Her cooking was just one outlet among many in which her artistry reigned supreme, drawn from her vast memory of traditional Pennsylvania Dutch recipes.  .

Mom-Mom’s family spoke Pennsylvania German (hereafter referred to as Dutch) during her upbringing.  Her English was fluent, but had a definite German intonation.  She would refer to Geoff and his sister Pam as grunbera keffer (potato bugs).  As an adolescent of the late 1960s, Geoff sported a mop of hair which never failed to elicit a challenge from Mom-Mom: “Vell, naw, Cheoffrey, vhy don’tcha geta haarcut so I can see yer little face?”

James was Geoff's grandfather, Claire's great grandfather, and Katie's husband.  He was a model of unrivaled Dutch Reformed Christian propriety.  Geoff's recollection of him was a man of dignified bearing, severely clipped hair parted down the left side, always cleanshaven, who wore rimless eyeglasses.  His afternoon and evening dress was reliably a vested woolen suit, starched white dress shirt, conservative cravat, and a small posy in his jacket buttonhole.  As a child, Geoff assumed he slept in this outfit and, for all he knew, this was true.  When in repose, he often smoked a claro cigar.  He was known as Pop-Pop.

Pop-Pop was a CPA and CFO for the Boyertown Burial Casket Company, a corporation that grew to become the second largest producer of fine coffins in the United States.  He worked for the company his entire career, retiring in his seventies.

Pop-pop was a formidable character, almost humorless, always pontificating about thrift and economy in the management of money.  When Geoff and his sister visited their grandparents' home, if they were well-behaved, they could expect to receive a quarter at their departure with the admonition, “Better put dat in der bank for a rainy day”.  Somehow, Geoff's quarter was always invested in a jumbo Superman comic book.