By Austin Lindner | Echo
As every dainty flower in the meadow must inevitably wilt, so must every Grandma Gracie move on to better things. On Thursday morning at approximately 4 a.m., the Campbell Senior Center lost a treasured community member and bingo enthusiast. In a freak quilting accident, the iconic columnist and legendary fountain of wisdom of our campus known as Grandma Gracie has "graduated".
While it would be easy for us to burn every "Echo" newspaper to ashes and slap our PAs in the face in protest, that is not what our beloved grandmother would have wanted. So instead, let's take a moment to reflect on Gracie's life and accomplishments.
Grandma Gracie was born in 1832 on the back of a stallion as it galloped freely through the Mojave desert. While it is currently unknown who her biological parents were, legend tells that Grandma Gracie's mother was the moon and her father was a dormant volcano.
Born Gracie May Leevawitz, the girl insisted from the first time she could talk that her friends and neighbors call her "Grandma." She was not a popular child.
After developing the skill of predicting the future by reading fortune cookies, Grandma joined a traveling circus troupe when she was 13. The troupe took her and her bag of chocolates all across the world, where she picked up much of the wisdom we have enjoyed in her column.
During her travels, Grandma Gracie dated many world dictators and dignitaries, but only ever had one true love. Her will states that she would prefer to keep this man anonymous, so I will only say that his favorite numbers were 0, 0 and 7.
Yes, you guessed it, Grandma Gracie fell in love with Cab Driver 1 from the classic Bond film, "Live and Let Die."
After many wonderful years, Cab Driver 1 and Grandma Gracie suffered a traumatic break up, in which Cab Driver 1 left Gracie for Casino Waitress 2 from "License to Kill," a rival installment in the Bond franchise as well as Gracie's love life.
Gracie gathered the splinters of her shattered heart and retired to the cornfields of Indiana in 1994, where she would spend the rest of her days at the Campbell Senior Center, waiting for Cab Driver 1 to return to her and beg forgiveness.
Although that day, unfortunately, never came, Gracie was able to channel her years of bitterness and wisdom into her advice columns.
While several other Campbell senior citizens were scrounging through some of Gracie's personal belongings at the Campbell Center, looking for loose change, they came across a few final words of advice for the Taylor community scribbled on a Post-it note.
Grandma Gracie wanted to tell students that as the year draws to a close, they should not fear the dreaded four-cornered hat of the commencement ceremony. According to Grandma Gracie, graduation does not have to be a sad ending to four years, but instead should be an exciting beginning to the many years ahead. Grandma Gracie wanted to urge students to continue growing and learning, even as they depart from the Upland campus.
She also wanted to say that she has buried two boxes under the dirt of the LaRita Boren Student Center. One is filled with the jewels she stole from Cab Driver 1's bank account. The other is filled with live piranhas.
Rest in peace, Grandma Gracie May Leevawitz.
