The year is 1974. My mom, in a bright red matching skirt and sweater and huge sunglasses, and me, in a white poncho sweater and flared pants, stand in a sandy construction lot in Sun City, Arizona. Behind us is Mimosa Drive, the street my grandparents would live on for the next 30 years. In the background there is more sand and a line of palm trees bordering the site of a future golf course. Not yet in place are the saguaro cacti and colored rocks that would dot the front yards along with street.

My grandparents moved to Sun City to escape chilly Chicago winters and to find a more relaxed style of life. In both respects, they succeeded. In my growing up years I remember visiting them and noticing my grandfather’s year-round tan and muscular frame from daily swims and bike rides. Every time we came, Grandpa enjoyed taking us to his community recreation center and recounting the story of Del Webb, the famed businessman who had created this new kind of retirement living—a dream for those who wanted warm weather, a sparkling, planned community and low property taxes.

My grandfather was committed to Sun City 100 percent. He served as part of the Sun City Prides, a volunteer group that swept city streets, picked up leaves and fallen oranges and did whatever else was needed to keep the city clean and neat. Grandpa would swim most mornings and then load up the big basket of his special three-wheeled bike with a rake and other tools. Whenever we visited, the bike became the prime entertainment for my brother and who would take turns driving and sitting in the basket and cruising up and down the manicured streets. We would often get lost on the bike, as the streets and houses all looked similar, and we’d spend half our time trying to figure out how to get back to Mimosa Drive, hopefully just at the end of cocktail hour and just in time for Grandma’s dinner.

Grandpa’s passion for Sun City was just one example of how he viewed the world. If he believed in something, he committed his whole self to the cause. He was a lifelong churchgoer, faithful church volunteer and Bible reader. He was a devoted husband and father to his two boys. And he and my grandma were also frugal to the extreme. They had lived through the great depression and waste was a four-letter word. Whenever Grandpa visited our house in California, it was almost as if it were 1930 again. Grandpa scolded us for leaving lights on in rooms we weren’t in and we were urged to join the “clean plate club” every night at dinner. Grandma saved paper napkins that had been only lightly soiled and we were shown how to save our chewing gum on a little plate for after meal time. In addition to these ideas, Grandpa had some strong ideas about hygiene. We were told to chew our food 32 times and when we were younger, but probably almost to our teenage years, he tried to get us to keep a chart of our bowel movements. I still remember the famed “bm chart” taped to the refrigerator.

For all the discipline though, living under my grandparents rules included a lot of fun. Instead of TV after dinner, they would teach us dice and card games. And Grandpa always had a joke to share, usually off-color. At night before bedtime, he taught me how to say the Lord’s prayer.

My Grandpa and Grandma took care of my brother and I quite a bit when we were growing up and my parents traveled. Grandpa would not only lay out the rules, but he made our house his own. No sooner had Grandpa arrived than he had changed all the radios to the big band station and he had found a slew of house projects that my parents didn’t even know had to be done. His nervous energy kept him moving all day. Grandpa had worked in the laundry business most of his life–first for his parents’ laundry on the south side of Chicago, then managing laundries around the Midwest and finally owning one of his own in South Dakota–and he was meticulous about cleanliness. I remember him spending a lot of time in the garage cleaning things. At his home in Sun City, he was the one, not my grandma, who did all the laundry.

When Grandpa got sick in his late ‘80s, it was hard to watch his decline. His vibrant, healthy body lost more and more weight and he was unable to keep busy and do all the activities he loved. His pain affected his mental state and he said hurtful things to my grandma, things he would have never said before, even though they did more than their share of bickering as a couple. I remember my last visit to see Grandpa in Sun City as a sad one. At the time I was in a year-long study of the Ignatian Exercises with my church at home. When I got back from the trip and described the grief of seeing my diminished grandpa to my pastor, she said perhaps this was my cross to bear at this time in my life.

Grandpa lived to be 89. He was one-of-a-kind. I’ll never forget his zest for life nor his commitment to the things he believed in. I didn’t always agree with him, but I’ll always respect the way he lived his life.