Grandpa Benjamin, my paternal Grandfather, born
during slavery- a slave - two days before the shots
were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, that
started the Civl War

Grandpa Benjamin, named by his slave master
and father, Benjamin Franklin, who gave him the
surname Fields, rather than Harrell, because he
did not want him to have the same surname as
his legal two sons

Grandpa Benjamin was the name he was called by
most people in the hamlet where he was born and
lived all his eighty-eight years and  where I, his
grandson, was born and lived all my pre-adult years.

Grandpa Benjamin, the title of the novel "Grandpa
Benjamin," where I wrote about the life and legacy
of my Grandfather, the man having a greater impact
on my life than any other man, and like him, I have
worn a full beard for more than a half century.

Grandpa Benjamin, progenitor of several hundred
descendants, including my father, his oldest child,
and the chief-founder of the Fields School that I
attended the first eight years of my schooling.

Grandpa Benjamin, the recipient of a letter and the
poem below I sent to him during the time when I was
a soldier on high alert expecting to receive orders
at any moment to go to Korea during the Korean War,
just several days before he transitioned from
mortality to immortality:

To love the earth you know for
   greater knowing
To lose the life you have for
   full life
To leave the friends you love, for
   heavenly loving and angelic fellowship
To find a land more sweet than home
   and more awesome than earth
Behold! A wind is rising and rivers
   are flowing
Your soul too is rising and flowing;
You are communing with the wind
  and the rivers
You, the wind and the rivers are one.

Farewell Grandpa Benjamin,
Your Gandson Uriah

Copyright 2014 by Uriah J. Fields