Researching maternal grandparents

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I can't say I have a lot of hobbies I am very passionate about, but one thing I do really enjoy in my spare time is doing research on my family, in particular my grandparents. I didn't know my maternal grandparents growing up. Both of them died before they were 40 and when my mom was a teenager. My grandfather died in 1975 and my grandmother died the day after Elvis did in 1977. As a result I didn't have much information on them. There are more questions than answers even today. I guess part of it is my love for history and also wanting to find out about people. My research started around 2010 I think. I used the websites like Ancestry and other public search engines. No dice. Either found nothing or nothing that I didn't already know. Needless to say when people would suggest them I'd get a little annoyed. Like, "you don't think I already tried those?" So I tried to start thinking outside the box. Here are a few things I did. First things first, when Google still had Google Archives (basically a newspaper archive engine), by chance one night I decided to look up my grandfather. He has a unique name and I typed it in, because why not? To my shock, they had numerous articles of him from a local newspaper dated 1958-59. The first time he was featured on the front page complete with a big photo of him. He had epilepsy and we found out the community raised thousands to send him to Duke University, hoping he could just get brain surgery to solve it. That was not to be the case. We also found out it all started when my grandfather fell off a moving vehicle going 70 MPH. From there, Duke University had a photo of my grandfather about to get his blood taken by a nurse. After that, I found out the school my grandfather went to (he went back to school after his hospital stay). Contacted the school and got numerous documents regarding grades. My mom and I found out it was here my grandparents met and fell in love and got married in 1960. My grandmother was a good student but was said to be very shy. She was good in English but bad in Math (like me!). My grandfather didn't seem to take school seriously and was late to class a lot. Quite a while after that (around 2014), my mom and I had another idea. My mom and uncle lived in a children's home for years because it was hard for both of my grandparents to hold a job. I got the idea to contact them. My co-worker at my job at the time (a library) was like "well, I doubt they'll have anything, but it wouldn't hurt to try!" So we got the necessary forms to fill out and sent them to the children's home. About two weeks later my mom and I got a big envelope in the mail. They sent literally over 200 PAGES of documents, some of these being handwritten letters from my grandparents! These letters were basically asking the home if my mom could get days off to spend time with them. It was SO nice to finally have something tangible they had. There were also a lot of forms from DSS visits, medical records of my mom and uncle, and information on my grandparents (their past, their jobs, etc.) This leads me to now, where I am waiting on medical records found on my grandmother. As soon as they are printed out, I'm getting them mailed to me. I am excited as I feel like the more I find on my grandparents, the more I know about them and I can piece together the kind of people they were. I am ALWAYS continuing research of them as I still feel like there is so much to find out but I am so grateful I have found as much stuff as I have. I'm thankful to all the different institutions, people, and resources that have helped me so far. Also, thank God for technology! My only wish is that I could find old photo albums my grandparents had. Photos of my grandfather on a motorcycle, photos of my grandmother after she gave birth to my mom, photos of my mom and uncle as babies... They had a ton and once they died, my mom went from home to home and lost track of them. We tried hard to contact one home she lived in 40 years ago but the family (who are still alive and live in the same location) more or less seemed like they had no clue who my mother was even though she remembered them well. Almost everyone else she lived with has died, so who knows is they still exist? Eventually we just gave up. Most of the albums probably don't exist anymore but I remain optimistic. After all, how many times have we seen things be relocated after years and years? If I had three wishes, one of them would be to find at least one album. I don't have many photos of my grandparents and I'd even be willing to pay cold hard cash to find one (especially to see my grandfather with a leather jacket on a bike and I can tell people "my grandpa was cooler than yours!" :P) So... there was my long spiel on how I've found information on my grandparents. I do enjoy talking about it as well as finding new ways to discovering more about them. What about all of you? Do you do genealogy/family research? What 'out the box' ways have you tried finding information? Also, I'd love to hear your stories and advice!