Today would have been Robert Allan MacDonald Sr.'s 100th birthday. He was my grandfather. Born in 1904 just weeks after the Wright Brothers made their first flight, he participated in many of the historic transitions of the 20th century. He had his own radio program in the 1920s. In the thirties, he promoted auto races in Colorado. During the Second World War, he was a civilian contractor building bases in Hawaii and Morocco. On his return he started a business in California building residential housing, becoming one of the first people to build low-income apartments in Oakland and developing a deepened distrust of bureaucracy in the process. After retirement in 1977 he wrote two books, one an autobiography for his family, and the other a guide on how to prosper in real estate and avoid scams called Real Astute Real Estate.
He and we always thought he would live to be 100, but he died in December 2002, just short of his 99th birthday, in his own bed on his beloved island of Kauai. How could I let today pass without remembering him?