In this recent but undated photo provided photo, Fred Grandy is pictured with his oldest living sister, Sietska Reed. Grandy was in Kyiv as a volunteer doing civic clean up, when he was killed in a Russian strike that destroyed the residential building he was was staying in. Grandy was the second youngest of seven children.
Courtesy Sietska Reed
Artist Fred Grandy grew up in Oregon with five sisters and one brother. The family also lived in Washington for a time. As an adult, Grandy moved around the country, with stints in California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Virginia. But his last days were spent in Ukraine, volunteering with a group that helped to clear up debris after Russian bombings. His sister, Bend resident Sietska Reed, says he had taken off on an open-ended trip to Western Europe but found himself drawn to Poland and then Ukraine.
Reed said her brother felt he was where he needed to be to help Ukrainians in a small but tangible way. Grandy was angry, she said, about President Donald Trump’s embrace of Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, and also wanted to represent the many Americans who are horrified by Trump’s actions and demonstrate support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. She says the family was notified last week by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine that her brother was among those killed in one of the heaviest Russian attacks on Kyiv since the invasion.
Reed joins us, along with her son Kennith Reed and her brother Jim Grandy, to remember Fred and tell his story as they think he would want it told.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez. Fred Grandy was an artist. He grew up in Oregon with his sisters and brothers. He was a traveler and he cared about helping people. That’s how he ended up in Kyiv, Ukraine this year, volunteering to help clear up debris from Russian bombings. But his family was notified last week that he was among more than 20 people killed in one of the heaviest Russian attacks on the capital city since their invasion of Ukraine began.
We want to honor Fred and his work today, so I’m joined by three members of his family. Jim Grandy is his brother, Sietska Reed is his sister, and her son Kennith Reed is his nephew. Thank you all so much for being here and I’m very sorry for your loss.
All: Thank you.
Chávez: We’re going to get into more of the details about what happened in Ukraine. But first I want to start by just talking about, he seems like a really great guy and I want to hear more about that from you. First of all, how would y’all describe Fred’s personality?
Jim Grandy: Fred was full of happiness most of the time. He never would admit his age. He always claimed he was about 20 years younger than he actually was. We could tell.
There was a cute thing that happened today. I was going through an envelope getting a pen out of his truck, and there was a comb in this envelope. And he was bald as could be, there was no use for a comb. [Laughs] I looked at the comb. I just held it and just went, “OK Fred, last joke’s on me.”
Sietska Reed: Yeah, well, he might have grown back. He was thinking he might.
He always made people feel better. It was a happy occasion to have him come by or stop and see his nephews and nieces. They were all just really, really fond of him. He was just a kind, happy person. He’d get frustrated at things, but he always put his best foot forward and everybody else’s around him. And had great hugs.
Kennith Reed: Yeah, he would take out like my cousin when he came into town. He’d always go over and see her and take her out to lunch. And I could spend hours on the phone talking to him, he was just a great guy, always made you feel better. Even if it was a tough situation, you could talk to him and, and it always made you feel better by the time I got off the phone with him.
Chávez: And Sietska and Jim, you are Fred’s siblings. What was he like as a kid?
S. Reed: Got away with being cute, pretty much got to run the show.
I’m 13 years older than him, so I remember him just as a baby and coming home from the hospital and everything. I thought he was absolutely adorable. He didn’t like try to get into my stuff like Jim here did.
Chávez: Oh Jim, called out! [Laughs]
Grandy: I remember when mom was pregnant with Fred, I had four older sisters. And I just knew it was gonna be a boy. I was 6 years old. And mom [said], “What if it’s a girl?” I said, “It’s a boy, that’s a boy.” And she was super relieved when he was a boy.
As a young guy, he always called Mt. Hood “Mountain Hood.” He used the formal name. I remember that. And he was a cross country guy in high school. He ran miles and miles, I don’t know how he did that.
S. Reed: About 25 miles at a time, yeah. He was rated No. 11 in the five western states, had some category up there. His summers were spent training with a group of runners. They’d take him out in an RV, drop him off and say, “We’ll pick you up at 20 miles.” I asked him, “How do Nikes hold up?” He says “Oh, not too bad. They don’t start wearing down until about 65 miles.” Who knows when they’ve went 65 miles?
Chávez: I’m having such a wonderful time hearing about Fred. He sounds like he had a great sense of humor. And just another question … I know he was an artist too. What kind of art did he make?
Grandy: I’m an artist too and he kind of saw me making money, so he got himself a table saw and a saw, and started cutting old wooden boards. It was called “shabby chic.” He would make mirrors out of wood, he made greenhouses out of old windows. That was his first stab at it. I used to call him my younger, less successful brother. And then he started cutting metal, metal members and various things, and he started making a great deal of money. And I had to call him my younger, more successful brother after that. [Laughter]
S. Reed: But he did a lot of things like that. And he was real versatile. He had different artsy looking yard furniture. I realized this little cabinet I’ve been using for 20 years, I thought “Oh, Fred made me that.” He made it for me years ago and it’s still standing.
Grandy: It’s a pie cooler, which people haven’t used in 50 years. But he started reintroducing these old designs.
K. Reed: And he would make metal flowers and tin flowers. He’d take old filing cabinets, cut out the flowers and stuff, and painted them.
S. Reed: By hand, yeah.
K. Reed: Then he started taking old handsaws, and cutting out animals and stuff in there, and putting them in the frame with some background and stuff. They were actually really nice.
S. Reed: My mom had an old baby grand and it was pretty bad shape. And when he got it after mom died, he turned some of it into wall art and into all kinds of stuff.
Grandy: I’ll bet that baby is still in Virginia in the storage unit. We’re gonna have to move that! [Laughter]
S. Reed: Yeah we’re still trying to track down his stuff that he has stored in Virginia.
He’s kind of hard to define. I got these beautiful quail that look like they’re running down a trail that he mounts on a log. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the fir trees and the pine trees cut out.
Oh, one thing he really captured was old handsaws. You know how people paint them or something? He cuts the saw part out so it looks like a big, tall Douglas fir and keeps the handle. Yeah, it was a tree.
Grandy: He changed a lot. He would do whatever came to mind. He’d get an idea and then his focus would go. That’s what he would make until the next idea. He’d make a bunch of them, see if they’d sell. If they sold, he kept making them. And if they didn’t …
S. Reed: California has street fairs. It seems there’s a lot more of them there I think because the weather’s better, but then it costs a lot more to show your stuff there.
Chávez: Well, thank you for giving us such a vivid, wonderful picture of Fred.
He was a traveler too. I know he’d been traveling around Europe in recent months. What was it that made him decide he wanted to go to Ukraine?
K. Reed: He had headed over there. He was in Germany for a little while and worked with the volunteer group over there with his CNC welding machine, teaching people how to use it. He decided he was gonna to learn German and he was working on that. Then he went to France for a while. And in his travels, after he went to France, he went to Poland. And over in Poland they have a memorial with the [Ukrainian] flag for each one of the people that have died over in Ukraine. He walked around that, saw it and was just touched by it. It moved him to volunteer with that group to go over to Ukraine.
So I don’t think it’s a planned out move for him. I don’t think he left the United States thinking “I’m gonna go over there, get over the border in Ukraine and do what I can.” I think he went over there and saw an opportunity to help, so he decided to do that.
S. Reed: He wanted people to know that there’re good Americans – that’s what he’d say. He was proud of that growing up, that we would help each other in all different aspects.
Grandy: He was staying with me before he left and we talked a bit about him going to Europe. He had sold his house. And I said, “Well, that’s not enough money to live in Europe.” But he had the idea and there’s no stopping him when he has the idea. He had mentioned going to Ukraine before he left, but what I remember about those conversations is he became very humble. He was a pretty proud guy in many ways and it was really interesting to see him be humble. I had a premonition that I’d never see him again before he left.
S. Reed: I actually looked it up and I talked to him two days before … He said, “I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be. I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.” He didn’t have any kind of money at all, or grants. Everything was just donating his time.
Grandy: He went over there on his own dime to help people that he didn’t know. It’s a saying: “You do as much as you can, for as many as you can, as often as you can.” And I love that because it’s just “what you can.” And he would do that. He was a good guy that way.
S. Reed: Before he left, he says, “I make money and I do all that. You just keep doing this cycle. I really wanna go do something and try something.” And Europe seemed to be a good place for him to start exploring. He was very excited about teaching the classes in Germany. I don’t know how we found that group to teach it, to be honest, but he found it.
Grandy: Seat of his pants.
S. Reed: Yeah, yeah. He had friends, I’ve had people call or send messages on Facebook from all over the United States. I had somebody from Michigan, Florida and Oklahoma … I don’t know where all. He has so many friends that he’s had contact with over the years and they just have all stayed in contact, which is pretty good nowadays.
One of the guys that he worked with quite a bit, he said he was always just a good guy. And he was always so tough, he just figured, “Well, you probably shouldn’t go over there, but he’s so tough, he’ll come through it.” And I think that’s kind of how we saw him.
When I talked to him last, he was happy because he had an apartment with his own bathroom and his own washing machine. [Laughter] Those were highlights for him. He didn’t live high on the hog, even here. He’d had a spaghetti dinner for everybody that he met and were working with or associated with there in Ukraine.
K. Reed: Yeah, he went out and made everybody a big spaghetti dinner.
Grandy: It was a crew that would go out and clean up after the bombings because they wanted to keep things clean and tidy, so people wouldn’t get demoralized and that the city didn’t look destroyed. He said he was going over there to do volunteer work, but he had no idea what kind of crew he was gonna get on when he left. I just figured he’d find something to do, which he did.
S. Reed: I don’t ever recall him owning any kind of gun or anything. He wasn’t somebody that was gonna do anything like that. He was just somebody who felt like he wanted to be just a good person and a good American over there.
K. Reed: He wasn’t a soldier or anything. He was fighting the way that he knew how with love, and caring, and helping people out.
S. Reed: He came by here, I looked it up, February 11. And I think he left within about three or four days of coming by here. So he was over there about four months.
Grandy: When I think about him and his sacrifice, and him going over there to do that, I think that we all have a higher nature. We just give it a little nod and this world will be a better place. And I think he did what he could to do that.
Chávez: I think so too. I think so too.
I know that you all mentioned some of the wonderful Facebook posts and messages that you have gotten from people who knew and worked with Fred. I think that outpouring of support and gratitude has included messages from Ukrainians. What has stood out to you about the response you’ve gotten from Ukrainian folks?
K. Reed: It’s amazing. They ran a story about Fred on Facebook in Ukraine, and there are thousands of comments on it from the Ukrainian people, giving us their condolences and their love. There’s 15,000 [to] 20,000 people that liked it over there. And for them to be going through all the stuff that they’re going through, and take the time out to honor Fred and reach out, it’s just amazing. What an amazing people that are over there, and heart goes out to each and every one of ‘em. It’s just incredible what they’re going through over there.
Grandy: I told my friend yesterday that I wish he had lived to see all of this. [Laughter] It wouldn’t have happened, but it’s just amazing the amount of acknowledgement of what he did with the last of his life. I’m just so proud of him and I go from happiness to sorrow 20 times a day right now.
S. Reed: I felt like when we started getting those in that letter from them, it was like, “It worked, Fred.” That’s what it felt like, it worked. And I was just so honored that it made a difference in somebody’s life.. I was just really proud for Fred and the family.
Chávez: I think that we’re all exposed to all of these terrible things in the news every day. It can be really overwhelming. I think a lot of people sometimes feel helpless in the face of this. I do sometimes. And I feel like Fred showed us that we’re not as helpless as we may feel. That one person’s actions can make a difference. Do you all feel that message from him as well?
K. Reed: Yeah, definitely. We’re so proud of him. And with all the stuff that’s going on with the world nowadays, to have a story like Fred that’s about caring and loving is a good message for all of us to hear right now.
S. Reed: Yeah. I think it is. It is really easy to think we need an army before any changes can happen. And sometimes they’re not very big changes. But if they change in one person’s life, if one person is regenerated, and tries to make the next person and the next person ...
Grandy: We don’t have to travel clear around the world to make a change. I mean, we can do that if we want. But every day, just saying hello to somebody who’s down and out, or being aware of how people are feeling around you, acknowledging a wonderful festive piece of clothing that somebody might have on, just little things, little things.
K. Reed: Fred use to do that.
Grandy: Fred was one flamboyant dresser at times. [Laughter]
Chávez: I love that.
Grandy: He’s got this just silver jacket that he would wear. Before he left to go on this trip, he hung that silver jacket in my closet because he felt like I should have that little bit of him.
K. Reed: You gotta keep that now.
Grandy: Yeah, I know, I’m trying to get the nerve to wear it. [Laughter]
S. Reed: I’m proposing that everybody start going by Goodwills and pick up ugly plaids.
Grandy: The gaudiest thing you can find.
Chávez: Oh, I love that idea. I’m gonna have to hit up a Goodwill soon. [Laughter]
Grandy: Stripes and plaids.
S. Reed: Yep. And he wore ‘em. He didn’t just wear them once or twice. It was like, “What do you got on?” But he definitely enjoyed that,. He was probably the most flamboyant of everybody, I think. Most of us don’t want to go out in public dressed that way. [Laughs]
Chávez: What do you hope to take from Fred, and the kind of person he was and the kind of work he did, and bring into the way you live your lives going forward?
S. Reed: I think reaching out … Yesterday, my husband went to the store and he saw an older woman sitting out here along the road. He went by and then he thought “maybe she needs some help,” and he turned around. And she didn’t have any way to get to the bus so she could go into the town, so he took her over and got her something at McDonald’s. He tried to take her to a place called the Warming Hut, but it was closed, so he drove her a little ways away, got her a pass on the bus and gave her a little bit of money. He came home in tears. He wanted to start doing that because of what Fred was doing.
Grandy: And we all have that opportunity. All these people that are homeless that we could look down on, it’s an opportunity for us to be able to reach out and to be of service of some sort, even just saying “hello” to them and acknowledging them human to human. I do that, and they become more than what they’ve been sitting there hoping for a dollar. They become “all right, we’re all here together” kind of a thing. And I’ve given them money, and I’ve seen them turn and give the next homeless person the same money. Maybe they owed it to him or whatever. And there’s plenty of awful things that happen too, but we still have opportunities to become better people. And it is a way to be better.
S. Reed: That’s what I’m hoping, and that’s what we really want to keep alive, is that generousness of heart that Fred had, that we all have a little bit in us. Honor that and see how far it will go. You come up with different things to do sometimes. Sometimes they don’t work out, sometimes they do.
My other son lives over in Colorado. He made these bags. He puts a stocking hat, gloves and socks, some energy bars. He has them all in his little ziploc bags or something. And then when he’s driving around and he sees somebody that’s homeless, he pulls up and says, “here, take this,” so they could be a little warmer.
Grandy: I buy socks at Goodwill and give them away in the wintertime. Socks makes them so happy, more than any money you’ll ever give ‘em. Clean new socks.
K. Reed: And you make big pots of beans and stuff, and take them out there.
Grandy: I used to feed them some, yeah.
S. Reed: That’s something else Fred did when he would do his shows like in Seattle and down in San Francisco and stuff. He would hire homeless people or find somebody and bring ‘em in. He’d pay him regular good wages and they would help unload his stuff. His stuff was a lot of metal, so it was heavy. And they would help set up his whole show, and he would take them out, feed ‘em and pay ‘em.
Grandy: I helped him one time and his boxes of steel, I told him, “Are you crazy? These things are 200 pounds each!” [Laughs]
Chávez: Well, folks, I have so loved getting a picture of Fred’s life and work. Thank you so much for coming here, it’s such a hard time, and sharing about his life.
K. Reed: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to tell his story.
Grandy: Thank you.
S. Reed: You guys are amazing. We appreciate you.
Grandy: And I appreciate your smile. I could just sit here and look at it. [Laughter]
Chávez: Well, we appreciate ya’ll too. Jim Grandy and Sietska Reed are Fred Grandy’s siblings. Kennith Reed is his nephew.
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