There are many stories Jonathan “Jon” Taylor could tell you about his grandfathers, Clarence E. Taylor, EG11, and Charles M. Grubb, EG14. (That’s 1911 and 1914, respectively.) Both were class presidents and were recognized as outstanding alumni in back-to-back years, 1963 and 1964.

There was the seemingly endless energy and strength of Granddad Taylor – a “long, lean string bean” – who, as a freshman, bested a couple of sophomores as part of inaugural (and, likely, unofficial) wrestling shenanigans that determined how long the freshman had to wear their beanies.

Then there are memories of Granddad Grubb, who had his nose broken during a tackle while playing on the scrub football team but kept his love of the game. As an adult, he had season tickets on the 40 yard line and enjoyed taking his grandson to watch the Fightin’ Blue Hens play with the smell of cigars and pipe smoke filling the air.

“I was always proud of both grandfathers going through school like that at a time when very few did. Having two grandfathers that graduated from college made me think I could be successful too,” said Taylor, who went on to cofound the Delaware real estate law firm Ward & Taylor.

Taylor recently reached out to the University to share the abundance of memorabilia he has thanks to his family’s history at UD. From yearbooks and old articles from The Review, to a scrub team football helmet and archival photos, the family keepsakes offer a glimpse into student and alumni life from past generations.

Born in 1883 in a rural farm community in downstate Delaware, Granddad Taylor’s lived experiences prior to college helped him in a number of memorable situations while at UD. That includes helping rescue a cow that had ended up in the belfry as part of a prank. His simple solution: “Back the cow down. You can’t make a big animal like that go down headfirst.”

“He realized he wanted to go to college, but he didn’t have the money to do it, so he worked on the railroad that traveled through Harrington shoveling coal into the steam engines for several years until he had enough saved,” explained Taylor, referring to the old Delaware Railroad that traversed most of the state and assisted the then-booming Delaware peach industry.

After graduating in 1911 with an electrical engineering degree, Granddad Taylor looked to the future as part of a new technology renaissance. As an electrical engineer, he traveled regionally removing old dynamos and installing new machines needed for converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. Eventually, he returned to Delaware and kept UD part of his life. From his basement workbench, he wrote letters to his fellow members of the Class of 1911, keeping them all up to date about the rest of the class. In 1963, he was recognized as an outstanding alumnus thanks to his efforts to keep everyone connected.

“He was the glue and took great pride in keeping everybody informed,” Taylor said.

In fact, keeping in touch with Blue Hens played a pivotal role for the family. When he learned a fellow UD graduate—Charles Grubb, who was class president of 1914—had a daughter from the class of ’39 doing research in New Haven, Conn., he suggested his son, from the class of ’38, who was working on a law degree in New Haven, get in touch.

“My parents met in part because both grandfathers knew each other from the University of Delaware and said to look the other one up,” Taylor said.

Of course, Granddad Grubb was similarly proud of his UD connection and also recognized as an outstanding alumnus in 1964. As a civil engineer, he worked throughout the region before returning to the University as an administrator, where he witnessed the institution transition from Delaware College to University. He also saw the opening of Delaware Stadium in 1952, where he thought it was appropriate that the visitor’s side stands would have to look into the afternoon sun.

Taylor himself has some patently Newark, Del., stories, too. While he is not an alumnus, he briefly took graduate classes at UD before heading to law school and worked at the Stone Balloon as a bartender. He has a “never-ending list” of memories from those days, including seeing Bruce Springsteen and Hall and Oates perform.

But it’s the memories of his grandfathers, their pride at being Blue Hens and the memorabilia they left behind through yearbooks, photos, letters and awards that has left such an impression. In addition to his grandfathers, Taylor’s father, Judge Clarence W. Taylor, was class president and graduated in 1938; his mother, Janet Grubb Taylor, graduated in 1939; and his brother Charles H. Taylor and his wife Leslie Carboni Taylor also graduated from UD.

“The college experience is a wonderful time for everyone—it always has been, it always will be—and the friends you make are ones you should hang on to,” Taylor said. “And, as my grandfather’s own histories as Blue Hens demonstrate, the memories will stay with you forever.”