An ex-Republican in Newtown Square took out a $50,000 ad in the N.Y. Times to criticize Trump

Why did an 80-year-old widower who lives in a Newtown Square retirement community spend $50,000 to take out a full-page ad in last Sunday’s New York Times pleading for President Donald Trump to resign?

“I thought of my two granddaughters,” said Grant Grissom in an interview on Tuesday. “I was haunted by them someday asking me, ‘When Trump was tearing down the country, what did you do?’

“I decided not to stand by and do nothing.”

A 1962 graduate of Central High School who was born and raised in the Tioga section of North Philadelphia, Grissom earned a PhD in child education and counseling from Bryn Mawr College. He also has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Penn State University and a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell University.

Grissom acknowledged that the ad buy absorbed a ”good chunk of my children’s inheritance.” But, he added, “they were supportive.”

So apparently were the 12,996 people who e-mailed him as of Tuesday to agree with the roughly 500 words he wrote condemning Trump. Just four readers wrote to say they took issue with the ad, Grissom said.

“I’m proud to tell you that,” added Grissom, former CEO and cofounder in 1994 of Polaris Health Directions, which developed questionnaires administered by computers to diagnose and monitor treatment for behavioral health. The company was sold two years ago, Grissom said.

His ad, published in nearly 700,000 newspapers, according to the latest figures from the media research firm Statista, was reported by Reddit and is part of a TikTok video that depicts a young woman reading it aloud.

Grissom writes that he was born into working-class Philadelphia. He says he was taught “to respect all people ... and be wary of the empty promises of politicians.”

What then follows is a series of what Grissom sees as Trump’s missteps: pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters; “groveling” before Putin; disrespecting the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain; allowing Elon Musk to “dismantle” agencies; cutting taxes for billionaires; and “dividing” the nation.

Grissom also takes Trump to task for having “refused to reject White Supremacy, an especially odious Christian heresy that finds no support in scripture or church doctrine... .”

It wasn’t Trump, however, who inspired Grissom’s exit from the Republican Party. President George W. Bush did that after he invaded Iraq in 2003. “I could not be supportive of what Bush was doing in the Middle East,” Grissom said.

Despite denunciations from Grissom and people like him, the Trump administration was poised to extol its accomplishments in the president’s Tuesday night speech before Congress, including its decision to impose hefty tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico.

The White House said Trump’s theme would be the “renewal of the American dream,” according to the Associated Press. Trump was also expected to ask Congress for more funds to underwrite his moves to suppress immigration, the AP added.

Though reports said Trump was fielding calls from nervous Republicans about the tariffs, Trump was planning to bring up cultural issues popular with the base, a senior administration official told CNN. “Watch, Republicans will be clapping all night long,” the official said.

For 25 years, Grissom was deeply involved in Christian teachings, part of the so-called Education for Ministry program connected to the School of Theology at the University of the South at Sewanee in Tennessee.

Grissom taught seminars at Swarthmore Presbyterian Church, as well as Trinity Episcopal Church, also in Swarthmore, and at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Radnor. He imparted to mostly older adults intensive scholarship about the Old and New Testaments, as well as Christian church history, and theology.

Grissom said his ad draws on what he’s learned and taught about Jesus, referencing the notion of “love of neighbor that Jesus commanded.”

As the teacher he was, Grissom poses a scenario near the end of the ad for readers to contemplate: “Imagine an elder speaking to a gathering of children: ‘There are two fierce tigers in my spirit: Anger-Hatred and Love-Compassion. They are fighting to the death.’ A fearful child asks, ‘Which will win?’ The elder replies, ‘The one that I feed.’”

Grissom then addresses Trump, saying, “You have fed us a diet of your anger and hatred. ...”

Grissom married his wife Gail in 1969. The couple had two children and lived in Wallingford for a while before moving to Media, where they lived for 35 years. Gail died in 2011.

Erik, Grissom’s son, is 55 and lives in Ewing. He works for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton. Daughter Merry, 52, is a script consultant living in Los Angeles.

She and two friends helped count Grissom’s email responses.

“I was so concerned,” Merry said in an interview on Tuesday. “I said to him, ‘You’re gonna get a lot of hate and you might not be very safe.’”

Grissom said that at his age, he doesn’t believe he has that much longer to live. It was more important to him, he told his daughter, to write what he felt than to worry about repercussions.

He added that he was “very disappointed” that the Washington Post rejected an anti-Trump ad submitted by Common Cause. Post opinion editor David Shipley recently quit the paper after owner Jeff Bezos indicated the paper was “curtailing the scope of views on the Post’s opinion pages,” according to the New York Times.

“It’s important to get your point of view out there, no matter what,” said Grissom. He’s accustomed to writing to newspapers, having penned letters to the editor of several publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, in which he shared memories of living on Marvine St. when he was a child.

Still counting emails as they popped up on Tuesday, Merry said losing inheritance money was worth it:

“I’m so proud to be his daughter, and I’m really so grateful his words have resonated with people.”