My paternal grandfather was the oldest of my grandparents and he was the first to die. It happened over 35 year ago. I was still in college - old enough to have clear memories. I find myself comparing him to myself:

He was more gregarious than me;
He made an effort to be fair to everyone and he passed along that emphasis to me;
He took care of household things so that they lasted 'forever'; I still have his hedge trimmers with his repair and marvel at the other things I have around the house that are 40+ years old because I care for tools in the same way;
Both of us only had one child and we were in our 30s when that child was born.

I look on the Internet Archive for books published around the time he was born and realize how much the world changed over the course of his lifetime. When he was growing up, farming was done with horses…then tractors. The farm houses had no electricity or plumbing but that too changed. He moved to town in 1950s because of drought that reduced the profitability of farming. He picked up odd jobs to supplement his savings. He was a quick study and a savvy one at ‘networking’ although he would have never called it that.

He was ahead of his time in another important way too: he bought me wooden blocks in a little wagon when I was very young. At the time, most people probably gave dolls to their little girls. He did construction projects with boards and nails in the garage with all my sisters too. He gave us the opportunity to enjoy activities that were not typically done with little girls and, by that example, showed us that our horizons were not limited by gender. Each of my grandparents probably contributed to that foundation, but from a different perspective and at different times of my growing up. My paternal grandfather was the first - when he gave me wooden blocks rather than a doll.