Our two daughters, Sarah and Mary Bart(ow), and my son-in-law, James, call me Poppa. The grandchildren call me Grampa (or Grandpa).

I truly love being called Poppa. That’s what my father called his father. My grandfather died when my father was 12 years old. I grew up loving to hear my Daddy – later “Pop” when I was older – talk about his Poppa.

To lose a parent at such a young age doesn’t seem fair. When Dr. Walter Bartow Houston died, at age 56, my grandmother, whom I never knew either, closed the house in Monroe, went off to live with one of her three grown daughters and sent my father to live with his sister Yorke, down in Macon, Ga.

I also grew up hearing how wonderful Macon, Ga., was, and of my dad’s football and track days at Lanier High School. And I never tired of his remembrances, including his earliest years in Monroe, and about his growing-up buddies.

My Pop was born in 1906 or ’07 (he was never sure) and died in 1990. My mother passed away in 1989.

My grandfather died in 1919, and he was born in 1862. That’s right. During the War Between the States. His brother, David Franklin Houston, my great-uncle, carved out a pretty successful career. Some of the highlights include serving as president of A&M College of Texas (1905-08) and chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis, (1908-15).

He served in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet, first as secretary of agriculture (1913-20), and then as secretary of the treasury (1920-21). He was chairman of the board, Federal Reserve Bank, and of the Federal Farm Loan Board (1920-21). At the time of his death, he was president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and he was a director on the boards of several companies.

Now, that’s enough bragging about my father’s “Uncle Frank.”

I drifted away from my original thought (I seem to drift a lot nowadays) about loving to be called Poppa.

As much as I love that, there’s something really, really special about being called Grampa.

Would that I saw those three wonderful little people who call me that more often.

Connecticut is just too far away from Little Washington.

Would that this were not so.

Thanks, kind readers, for indulging me such family focused musings. I’ll try not to do this too often. We all have family stories we could share, don’t we?