+
upworthy
Culture

A 94-year-old widower built a community pool to share with everyone after losing his wife

A 94-year-old widower built a community pool to share with everyone after losing his wife
via Boyd Huppert's Land of 10,000 Stories / YouTube

Keith Davidson, a 94-year-old retired district court judge lost Evy, his dear wife of 66 years in April 2016. The feeling of grief and loss was overwhelming.

"You just can't imagine what it's like," he said. "You cry a lot. That's just the way it is because she's not here," he told "Boyd Huppert's Land of 10,000 Stories," in a story that first appeared in 2017.

After living in a house that felt far too quiet for over a year, he decided to open his home to the kids of the neighborhood by building a pool. Davidson lives in the small town of Morris, Minnesota where there is no place for the community to swim.


"This spring when I saw him marking the yard, I told my husband, he's really going to put a pool in his backyard," his neighbor Jessica Huebner said. Davidson has led an active life, he's a bass and tuba player with area musical organizations and was a radio operator for the Army in World War II.

Davidson went all out with his pool, it's 32 feet long, 16-feet wide, and nine feet deep under the diving board, a pretty big undertaking for a man in his 90s.

94-year-old retired judge puts in pool for neighborhood kidswww.youtube.com

After the pool was completed in July 2017, neighborhood families flocked to Davidson's backyard. "I knew they'd come," Davison said, laughing.

"Now we're going to be here every day," said Jaime Mundal, a neighborhood mom.

The judge has three children, but no grandchildren. So the young company is more than welcome. His pool rules require a parent or grandparent to be present when children are swimming.

"You kind of adopted our whole neighborhood of kids, these are your grandkids," Huebner told Davidson. "It's him spreading joy throughout our neighborhood for these kids," Huebner told "10,000 Stories."

Now, instead of being stuck in the house on sunny afternoons, Davidson watches the kids splash around his yard, knocking around volleyballs, and sucking down fruit punch.

He takes it all in from his lawn chair.

"I'm not sitting by myself looking at the walls," he smiled. Besides, Davison asks, "What else would you think of doing where you could have a whole bunch of kids over every afternoon?"

However, the kids aren't the only ones having fun at Davidson's house. He likes to jump in for a dip himself from time to time.

Davidson's decision to open his home to the community at the age of 94 was a wonderful way for him to help his neighbors as well as himself. Grief experts say that one of the best ways for widows and widowers to overcome the tremendous feeling of loss is to get back into enjoying life by socializing and spending time with people who share the same hobbies.

Hanging around with children all day is also a great way for a nonagenarian to stay young.

Family

Mom calls out teacher who gave her son a 'zero' grade for not providing class with supplies

Her viral video sparked a debate as to whether or not providing school supplies should be mandatory for parents.

@shanittanicole/TikTok

A zero grade for not providing school supplies?

The debate as to whether or not parents should supply classroom supplies is not new. But as prices continue to rise, parents are growing more baffled as to how they can be expected by teachers to provide all the various glue sticks, colored pencils, rulers and other various items the incoming students might need.

What’s even more perplexing, however, is penalizing the children of parents who won’t (or can’t) provide them.

This was the case for Shanitta Nicole, who discovered her son received a zero grade in his new school for not bringing school supplies for the entire classroom.
Keep ReadingShow less
via Pexels

Millennials are now old enough to seriously reflect on life.

It seems like only yesterday a millennial was a college kid that baby boomers chided for being entitled and Gen Xers thought were way too sincere and needed to learn how to take a joke. Today, the oldest millennials, those born around 1980, have hit their 40s and have lived long enough to have some serious regrets.

They also have enough experience to take some pride in decisions that, in hindsight, were the right moves.

The good news is that at 40 there is still plenty of time to learn from our successes and failures to set ourselves up for a great second half of life. These lessons are also valuable to the Gen Zers coming up who can avoid the pitfalls of the older generation.

A Reddit user who has since deleted their profile asked millennials nearing 40 “what were your biggest mistakes at this point in life?” and they received more than 2,200 responses. The biggest regrets these millennials have are being flippant about their health and not saving enough money when they were younger.

Keep ReadingShow less


Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called "The Apples of New York" was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson's personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.






Keep ReadingShow less
via Wikimedia Commons and Jerry Woody/Wikimedia Commons

Two Victoria gentleman and a shilling from 1894.

If you had a time machine and woke up in Victorian-era London (1837-1901), you would have difficulty breathing because of the air quality. You'd also walk around plugging your nose because of the poor sanitation and probably be very confused when purchasing anything because of the monetary system.

J. Draper, a London historian and tour guide, explained why money was so different in the Victorian era in a popular YouTube video with nearly 300,000 views. “Let me try and explain how pounds, shillings and pence worked,” J Draper opens her video.

Keep ReadingShow less

Man hears stepdaughter call him "Dad" for the first time.

Being a parent is often a thankless job, and being a stepparent is usually even more thankless. But most parents show up and do their best to make sure their kids have what they need and feel loved. So when our kids do or say something to show appreciation, it melts our hearts—but nothing melts it faster than a stepchild calling their bonus parent "Mom" or "Dad" for the first time.

A creator named Shane posted a clip from a longer video showing his reaction to hearing his stepdaughter call him "Dad" for the first time. The full video is about three years old, but when it was reposted as a clip recently, it pulled on everyone's heartstrings.

Shane and his wife, Liana, run the social media pages Shane and Liana where they post silly videos pranking each other. But this video wasn't a prank. His stepdaughter, London, wanted to surprise him after wanting to call him "Dad" for a long time.

Keep ReadingShow less

Dog refuses to walk with Mom, but her legs work with Grandma.

What gives dogs the right to have such big and hilarious personalities? It seems like these dogs have found a way to make their humans laugh while also annoying them until they're ready to come apart. It's truly a skill that only dogs and toddlers seem to possess in great quantities.

Zoe is a pit bull with a bombastic side-eye that makes it clear that she only tolerates her mother, Raven, but adores her grandmother, Yonika. There is no confusion about who her favorite person is, and Zoe's grandmother only seems to encourage the behavior. The two of them are the best of friends, and Mom...well, she's the third wheel.

Sure, Zoe likes her mom a little—she does feed her, after all—but the verdict is still being determined if love can be claimed. Raven can't even convince the sassy pittie to go on a walk with her.

Keep ReadingShow less