The Greatest Generation Imparted its Political Wisdom. Don’t You Miss Its Broad Knowledge and Good Rationale?
My partner’s father, a member of The Greatest Generation, returning from an Honor Flight to Washington DC. It was one of the best days of his life.
Our senior-most seniors offer perspectives the rest of us couldn’t have.
At his senior center, my father repeatedly poked his index finger into the forehead of Vice President Al Gore, smiling from the cover of the 2001 Time Magazine.
“Dad, what?” I asked, not knowing if this demonstration was for my benefit or his.
He looked at me, then back at the magazine, finding the right word as he repeated his action.
“Mudhen,” he said, and continued to poke Al between the eyes.
The GI Generation became The Greatest Generation
Colleagues that were my Dad’s age were members of The Greatest Generation, a term journalist Tom Brokaw made popular in his book of the same name. Brokaw described those individuals born between 1910 and 1930 and ticks off the history of 25 years that included the deprivations of the Great Depression and the fighting of World War II. He argues that the men and women of the Greatest Generation developed values of “personal responsibility, duty, honor and faith.”
I miss those layered opinions of my parents and my partner’s parents, all of whom have passed. As I grew up, I came to understand their lives of depth and richness. No 140-character tweets or breaking news in 2-point type read off their mobiles. They read in-depth articles in the Los Angeles Times, heard Walter Cronkite faithfully at 6:00 p.m. nightly, and then discussed those thoughts over the dinner table. I’m not saying it was better or worse; I’m saying theirs was different.
If I expected politics to be less important to my father or others of his generation as they grew older, I would be wrong. Dad’s pattern of aging and the political choices he made typified many of those of his time.
Dad had immigrated to the US in the early 1950’s and voted Democrat when he became a US citizen. As he aged, gathered capital, and invested in both real estate and stocks, his political viewpoint changed to Republican. Though I’d never heard him use the word before, his choice of “mudhen” made it clear he did not like Mr. Gore.
I long for multi-layered, well thought-out, opinions.
Last week, with the public hearings of supreme court nominee Neil Gorsuch, I found myself missing my ex father-in-law, Henry, who practiced anti-trust law in Washington, DC, clerked for Justice John Marshall Harlan II, and argued in front of the Supreme Court.
What would he have thought about Gorsuch’s answers and the attempted politicizing of today’s judicial branch?
Were he still alive, Henry and I would have sat in his living room with his black Newfoundlander, at his feet. Henry would have read and dropped the sections of newspapers onto the floor so they wouldn’t interfere with his beloved dog, but they would have created quite a pile of newsprint — as it included The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. I knew Henry as a liberal thinker, but he’d clerked for a conservative. Perhaps for that reason alone, his answers would be far reaching as he had the ability to understand the nuances of an issue and speak to its complexities.
That generation held strongly to personal responsibility, duty, honor and faith.
I never liked the conservative opinions of my partner’s father. Rather, I didn’t appreciate the in-your-face-Bill-O’Reilly-way that Dick voiced them. Dick and I agreed not to talk politics. But, on the side, he demanded answers as to why I went to Haiti to help when there was plenty of need in the U.S. If my niece was upset by something her cousin said, he questioned if it was my duty to protect her or did her own skin need to thicken? Dick would go after my beliefs with a vengeance; or in that Greatest-Generation-way (and possibly a hint of family love) was he simply demanding I think carefully about those values and choose those that were “correct”?
They won’t be with us forever.
We are lucky to still have access to the thoughts of members of the Greatest Generation. The parents of the Baby Boomers are living, and living well. A PBS article about centenarians indicates their numbers rose from 32,194 to 53,364, an increase of almost 66 percent between 1980 and 2010, . The latest population estimate, released in July 2015, reflects 76,974 Americans who are 100+. Perhaps we need a cable channel featuring only our senior-most citizens and their sentiments about what to do in Washington.
A friend recently sent me a note about his mother, a woman in her early 90’s:
I’m in San Diego where my mother was in the hospital from Tuesday to yesterday. This was the second hospitalization for the same thing in two weeks. She was dehydrated, with a general diagnosis of “failure to thrive.” She had not been eating or drinking much for several days.
The doctors were nudging us toward hospice, and we had even met in the hospital room with representatives from three hospices. But on the final day, she suddenly became lively and ate well and engaged with people around her after not speaking for months.
She asked me, “What are you?”
I didn’t know how to respond until she said, “I’m a Democrat.” She then asked all the nurses and doctors who came to the room if they were Democrats.
She later said, “It’s hard to pass.”
Again I didn’t know how to respond because of the hospital context, until she said, “The health bill — the Republican one.”
Your thoughts and opinion are always welcome by scrolling down or emailing JudyO@JOHaselhoef.com.
Judy O Haselhoef, a social artist, story-teller, and author of “GIVE & TAKE: Doing Our Damnedest NOT to be Another Charity in Haiti,” blogs regularly at her website, www.JOHaselhoef.com.
Copyright @2017: If you’d like to use any part of it (up to 200 words), please give full attribution and this website, www.JOHaselhoef.com.
