The Greatest Generation

A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE, a high school classmate of mine, lost his mother yesterday. He'll find her in heaven. She was 86, so was born in 1927. Typical of her generation, she was hard working, patriotic, and successful. One of our friends referred to her as being a member of America's "greatest Generation". The book by that title, by Tom Brokaw, is very interesting, by the way, even if it waxes a bit one sided in expousing the virtues of the world war two generation. My personal experience with the men of that generation led me to see them as domineering, men who regarded their women as personal property. The women seemed to accept this. My friend's mom, it srtuck me, was just barely old enough to be a member of the greatest generation, which can be defined as "anyone the proper age to have fought in World War Two". Fighting means fihgting. Eisenhower, Patton, and McArthrur were not members of the greatest generation; they didn't do any of the actual fighting, did they? If you were born in 1927, you turned eighteen in 1945, just barely in time to see action in the second war to end all wars. So, yes, you were a member of the greatest generation, just under the wire. My own mohter tried to enlist in the army immediately after Pearl harbor, she was 21 years old, and a nurse. My father and my uncled made her refrain from that, by pointing out that nurses would be needed on the homefront during the war just as much as ever. Mom is now ninety three, says she never once voted for Roosevelt, but has finially decided to ease up a little on the Japanese, since I explained to her that FDR goaded the Japanese into attacking, because without United States participation in the war against Hitler, Htiler might not've been stopped soon enough. Members of the greatest generation who are still alive do not considers themselves heros, so the rest of us have to remind the ones still around that we will always consider them to be our heros.