That was Earth Day No. 46 on Friday, and this international event was marked with celebrations locally, regionally, and nationally as well as in Tierra del Fuego, French Polynesia, Seychelles, and Kyrgyzstan.

Some claim that it was the first Earth Day, in 1970, that put environmental stewardship in the hands of the individual, and changed our collective consciousness. Not to be a contrarian, but I believe that awakening happened long before Woodstock, before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency.

You see, Earth Day was every day for my grandfather James P. Matthews, Sr., and I know he was not alone in his mission to treat the soil with care, regard water as a most precious resource, and give wildlife a place to roam.

He was a man rich in respect, which is a good foundation for so many areas of our lives. If there was more basic respect floating around, we would have much less conflict, abuse, crime and pollution. Pa Matthews lived a modest life, but he was a millionaire in terms of his values, including a genuine reverence for his fellow man, and the gifts that God placed on this earth.

I remember as a very young kid watching the way he greeted people on the street, with a soft smile, a slight nod, and words that seemed to float quietly from his soul. That respect carried over into every aspect of his life — his care for his family, his approach to his job, the humility he had over his service to his country as a World War I doughboy, and even in the way he genuflected and blessed himself when he entered church for daily Mass.

And he respected the planet, without needing a day in late April to motivate him. The only things officially green in his world were his car — a ’56 Chevy Bel Air — and the lawn, garden, meadows, and hillsides around his home. But he could have been the posterboy for Earth Day if it had been hatched 100 years ago.

Yes, Pa never used a hashtag, never wore a shirt with a slogan on it, and never put a bumper sticker on his car, but he was an environmentalist decades before that label became a badge of honor some feel necessary to tout. My grandpa just lived in a respectful way, without ever feeling the need for a pat on the back.

My younger brothers Sean and Seamas were close to my age, and the three of us would spend part of our summers at my grandparents’ home a few miles off the Ohio River and back up a narrow valley that West Virginians called a “holler” but the more erudite Ohioans insisted was a hollow. The Matthews had a neat little house, an orchard, rows of raspberry bushes, a huge vegetable garden, a tree swing, a woods healthy with hickory, oak and walnut, and a creek flowing through the property. For a trio of young boys, this was heaven, minus only the pearly gates.

Pa treated that homestead, and everything about it, with respect. He collected the rain off the roof in large barrels, and used that supply to water his garden. He would gather the egg shells, coffee grounds, vegetable scraps and other nonmeat items from the kitchen in a metal bucket, and each day he would dump those materials in a shallow trench in his garden, and cover them with loose soil. He was recycling, composting and using organic fertilizer ages before Mother Earth News started preaching about ecology and alternative energy.

My grandfather smoked, but I never saw a cigarette butt in his yard, garden, garage, or basement. When he would sit under the tulip poplar trees, in those sling-back canvas chairs, and put his cigarette out on his shoe bottom, twirl the excess tobacco onto the ground where it would disappear into the rich soil, and then put the filter in his pocket so it could be properly disposed of when he laundered his trousers.

Pa also saved the large branches that fell from his trees with every summer storm, cut them up, and used them to add extra heat in his family’s cozy one-story home.

Nothing went to waste because like many who had lived through the Depression, Pa threw very little away. He carefully cut and sanded pieces of scrap lumber into blocks, then painted them by hand so his grandchildren had some rainy day toys during those holiday and summer visits.

Pa took seedlings from the woods, and planted them in the yard to give the house more shade. He collected English walnuts, hung them in bags in the basement, and then harvested the meats by cracking the nuts by hand, individually. The hard shells went into the furnace as fuel.

Grandpa Matthews had no tolerance for the tiniest of litter. When we drove back in the mountains to fish an isolated stretch of one of the streams that danced their way through those hills, we never left a location without first “policing the area” at his directive. That was his way of describing a two-minute cleanup of the trash and debris left by less respectful visitors to that creek bank.

None of this activity seemed radical or revolutionary or particularly inventive to a 12-year-old kid. It all just made sense back then, and it makes sense now. My grandpa was a man of unwavering faith, a hard-working provider for his family, and a twinkle-in-the-eye kind of guy with his grandkids. Looking back, I guess he was an environmentalist too.

What makes him different from today’s environmentalists is that he simply lived his respect and reverence for the outdoors, for the trees and wildlife in the woods, the creek that flowed down out of the mountains and ran behind his home, for the soil underneath us, and for the planet.

Pa was never part of a doom-and-gloom protest, never carried a sign, never symbolically rode his bicycle to work one day, and he never marched on Washington demanding more windmills or less nuclear power. He just believed in caring for the planet, being wise in how we utilized its resources, and respecting our wildlife, the fresh air, the sunrise, the trees, and the mountains.

Care for the earth was not something he pondered, not something he lectured us about, or something he was inspired to do because he heard a great speech one day. My grandfather never considered himself an environmentalist, if that is a religion or a political movement. He was just a good, respectful man. That simple respect seems to be a resource in very short supply these days.

Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.

First Published April 24, 2016, 4:39 a.m.