My paternal grandfather was born to William and Matilda (Pigeon) Warner, the fifth of six children. Oddly, he was the only one without a middle name, especially considering that his brother, Loren, had two of them. He sometimes used the middle initial R because it was his father's, but it wasn't his.

He grew up on a farm near Au Gres, Michigan.

He married Josephine Alice Douglass on November 29, 1906 in Saginaw, Michigan. They had four children: Howard William, Clarence Earl, Sarah Beatrix Genevieve, and Ernest Walter. Ernest died at 2 days of age. Josephine died from complications related to his birth. Within 11 months after her death, their only daughter, Bea, died from meningitis at the age of 4 years.

A few years later, he met and married my grandmother, Ila Marie Coutchie. They were married October 2, 1918 in Flint, Michigan. They had four children: Marcella Marion, Walter Maurice (my dad), Dorothy Mae, and Duane Joseph. They also raised his two oldest sons from his 1st marriage, so they had six children in all.

He was a chief engineer for the Pierre Marquette Railroad, having entered the railroad business as a firefighter. He worked for Pierre Marquette for nearly forty years. Pierre Marquette was a subsidiary of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.

He was a fourth degree Knight of Columbus.

He and my grandmother were on vacation, on their way to visit his sister in Minnesota when they were hit head-on by a drunk driver, who was driving a stick-shift (standard transmission) with one leg in a cast, and had a suspended driver's license. Grandpa suffered a broken neck, a fractured skull, and shock. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Grandma was also seriously injured, but recovered and lived another 15 years.

For killing my grandfather and nearly killing my grandmother, the drunk driver served 12 months in prison.
He robbed me of the chance to know my grandfather, who was killed 10 years before I was born.