Julie’s obituary. Julie’s grandfather T.J. and my grandfather were brothers. When my great-grandmother had her children, someone from the county would come by and fill out the paperwork for her. All his life, people assumed that T.J. stood for Thomas Jefferson or something similar. Nope. His birth certificate listed his name as T.J. because that was what the county worker wrote down. Being barely literate, my great-grandparents didn’t realize this error for years and then they just accepted it like they did whatever life gave them. They did allow my grandfather to join the Navy when he was a teenager so that he would get the education they never had.