Lefty didn’t want an obituary.
But he didn’t say anything about a newspaper column, so here goes.
George “Lefty” Gray was a character who developed a following on social media, thanks to the niece who regularly shared his wise, funny and often salty observations on her Facebook page.
When he died last weekend at 103, he left not only family members, friends and the former baseball players he once coached, but also hundreds of people who knew him only through his words.
I met Lefty and Helen, his wife of nearly 76 years, about a year and a half ago at Western Reserve Masonic Community near Medina, where they’d moved after spending more than 60 years in the same house in Kenmore. I was there at the invitation of niece Deb Canale to do a story on Lefty and the musings Canale posted on Facebook.
Canale was the Grays’ lifeline. Even before they moved to the retirement community, she started visiting them weekly, bringing them meals and encouraging them to talk and reminisce.
Once when she visited their house, she found Lefty in sweatpants that were nearly falling apart. She coyly asked if he needed her to pick up anything from the store, but he declined.
Then he opened his refrigerator door, “and his pants just fell to the ground,” Canale recalled. “And he looks at me and says, ‘I guess I could use some pants.’ ”
The day I visited, Lefty had trouble carrying on a conversation and sticking to a topic, unless it was one that captivated him. But I could see glimmers of the brash and mischievous man he must have been.
He spoke a little about growing up on North Hill and pitching for a Yankees farm team. He recalled coaching Little League and helping to coach baseball as a volunteer at Kenmore High School. He remembered courting Helen and proposing by simply telling her he’d marry her on a certain day, and she’d better show up.
But little of what he told me that day was as comical as the remarks Canale has shared over the last six or so years on her Facebook page. A few of my favorites posts:
I asked Lefty what advice he had for people who hoped to be as old as him one day. He said, “How old am I?” “102,” I said. “Well who the hell wants to get that old??”
Watching Golden Girls and Blanche wants to use her bonus from work to get her breasts enlarged.
Lefty: “What? What did she say?”
Me, loudly: “She’s going to get her breasts made bigger.”
Lefty: “They can do that? At the doctors? Did you hear that Helen? They can make those bigger!”
Helen: “I know that.”
Lefty: “Well why didn’t anyone tell me??”
I told him [Lefty] I’m buying a dishwasher for his old house and he said “Well how damn lazy are you that you can’t wash up one dish?” Then he laughed at me.
Lefty: “That girl brought two soups today.”
Helen: “You mean Debbie.”
Lefty: “Debbie who?”
Helen: “Debbie, Irene’s girl.”
Lefty: “Yeah I know that. What about her?”
Helen: “She’s ‘that girl.’ ”
Lefty: “What girl?”
All this while I’m sitting right on the bed in her room with them.
Canale said Lefty had been in a downward slide for the last month or so, after being hospitalized for an old burn that had never healed properly and became infected. He would no longer eat much or take medications other than the antibiotics prescribed for his infection.
“I think he was just done,” she said.
One of the nurses told Canale she knew he wasn’t feeling well because “he held my hand and said thank you, but he didn’t pinch my butt.” Canale learned on Sept. 17 that he’d been placed in hospice care, and that night he died.
In keeping with the instructions he gave his trust attorney, there was no service or obituary, just a private cremation and burial. As Canale explained it on Facebook, “He said to me a few times that he lived in the same house for decades and ‘if people want to see me, they shouldn’t wait until I’m dead.’ ”
He ended that declaration with an expletive, as he often did.
Duly noted, Lefty.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.