We’Ve Left A Benchmark For You

Some years ago, I read that my lifetime has been a unique period in man’s history. Now, as Tom Brokaw’s book suggests, they are calling my generation “the greatest generation.”

Excuse my immodesty but I agree.

The Great Depression was part of my childhood as were crystal radios, electric streetcars and buses that ran on cobblestone streets. Five-cent fares for buses and streetcars, 10 cents for the Saturday movie.

FDR was the only president I knew till my late teens. Only the rich went to college and flew in airplanes. The masses were mostly uneducated and rode the train and bus. Land speeds of 80 mph were astounding.

In 1941, Pearl Harbor changed our lives forever. The country - all the country - went to war, often with a high school diploma in one hand and an induction notice in the other.

Prop-driven planes gave way to jets, blockbusters to atom bombs. Our science jumped in quantum leaps. Medical procedures became obsolete almost as fast as they came upon the scene and were replaced by the best that man ever had. We paid a horrific price in human suffering and losses but we defeated Hitler and the Nazis. We conquered Japan. We became the utmost in modern technology. Our economic policies changed the world. GIs became college graduates. We set the world on fire with our ideas of freedom and independence.

We built roads, towns, cities of skyscrapers. We landed men on the moon and sailed the seas of the universe. Our crystal radios were replaced with television sets and personal computers.

Those of us who lived in 1930 shake our heads in disbelief at what we hve experienced.

Those who are too young to know firsthand the times of which I speak find it almost impossible to understand economic depression, Prohibition, the Roaring ‘20s, bootlegging of liquor, corrupt politics, poverty, war. We enjoyed the simple pleasures of family and friends. Like society today, we covered every aspect of the search for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The greatest generation is now your grampas and grammas. Many of us are in the hospitals and nursing homes across the country. We are grayhaired, a little slower and more in need of the young people of today. You must now defend us as we defended the society of our time.

Every achievement is an achievement to be bettered. I pray the younger people today can one day look back and say, “Now we are the greatest generation.!”