My greatest childhood memories in Virginia were punctuated by visits from “Bertie Boy.”

Bertrand Thompson “Bertie Boy” was born on February 26, 1913, and worked as an engineer for Pratt & Whitney and later Lockheed Martin Corporation. While at Lockheed Martin, he was part of the infamous Skunk Works program and helped design the engines for the SR-71 Blackbird. According to the stories I grew up hearing, he lived a secret life and would disappear for several months at a time without telling anyone his whereabouts. It was only many years later that he revealed he had been working at Area 51 and traveling around the world doing secret projects for the Blackbird program.

All of these details are impressive, but all that really mattered to me was that Bertie Boy was my grandfather, and he loved me unconditionally.

Bertie Boy was my mother’s father. Sadly, my grandmother passed away long before I was born, while my mother was still in college. Now in his late seventies and living in Connecticut, Bertie Boy would drive down to Virginia to visit us. Since the drive was long, he would make it worthwhile and stay for several months at a time.

He drove a fancy Lincoln Mark VIII, and on his drive down, he would always make a stop at Stuckey’s to get us their famous taffy. Once he got into town, I would spend nearly every moment I could with him.

His daily routine was pretty simple: take our dog to Dunkin’ Donuts to get coffee and donuts for everyone, attempt the daily crossword puzzle in the paper, work on jigsaw puzzles or try to build model airplanes, watch any NFL game he could, watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, and go to bed, usually after having a “nightcap.”

I would generally derail him at every step of this process.

He was tall, looked strong for his age, and had a totally bald head except for a perfectly white horseshoe of hair that he kept well-manicured. I found it hysterical to mess up the sides of his hair and get it into a Bozo the Clown motif. While he was doing his crosswords, I would constantly want his attention and distract him from his task. My sister and I thwarted his puzzle efforts by hiding a few puzzle pieces and not telling him until the end. I would let him have his moment during Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and watch him in action. He knew every single puzzle before the contestants. During Jeopardy!, he would say the answer under his breath to nearly every clue. Had we gotten him on either show, I am confident we would all be millionaires.

I remember accompanying him on a Dunkin’ Donuts trip and being amazed that his Lincoln Mark VIII had a state-of-the-art number pad to unlock the car. He shared the code with me. It was his birthday with a zero at the end: 2-2-6-1-3-0. I would get excited every time I got to unlock the car for him, and he would tell me how smart I was for remembering the code.

My favorite memories were when he would take me to Mike’s Trainland, a massive toy store. It had all the goods: Legos, Playmobil sets, model trains, and model planes, but the real magic was in the big back room. They had an entire miniature railroad layout with towns, tracks, tunnels, scenery, and several trains running through it. At Christmas, they would decorate it all with fake snow and holiday decorations. Bertie Boy would tell me about the different trains and what kind of engines they had, and I would be fascinated. As a bonus, I would usually leave with a small rubber-band airplane or balsa wood plane model that I would end up breaking within minutes of assembly. Bertie Boy would also take me to the field where people flew model airplanes and tell me everything I ever wanted to know about the different aircraft as we watched them soar through the air.

What I loved most about Bertie Boy was how much he loved me. He was kind and generous, and he made people feel special wherever he went. If I met anyone he knew — his nurse, his barber, the neighbor — they would all tell me that Bertie never stopped talking about how great I was. Bertie believed in me and made me believe I could accomplish anything.