![]() If you'd had asked me to point out Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq on a map, I might've been confident in getting one, if any at all, of those right. I remember wondering if, or when, I'd have a I remember … generationally-shared life moment.Ī month before I turned 17, growing up in a small, Southwestern Pennsylvania town, I hadn't given the Middle East much thought. I remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed … I remember where I was when Kennedy was sho t… I remember … Growing up, I remember hearing the shared intro to the same big stories that featured the same big elements with minor details differing: I remember when, I remember where… Yet, both saw the world through the same bifocal view: The Depression, and The War. Being born just five years after my older grandfather made all the difference in his world. He went to basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi, not knowing whether the war would welcome him one or two oceans away. The other was the second to last to be drafted from his small Southwestern Pennsylvania town. While both of my grandfathers were drafted in WWII, only one actively served overseas, seeing early conflict from Normandy inward across the European Continent. I often wonder how the weight might've been different if he carried it himself. And the war did weigh heavy on him through them and generational sharing of sadness, anger, anxiety, regret, and frustration. But still, high school friends, relatives, and friends he'd make later in life were called upon and did serve. men to report for duty to service in the Vietnam War. My father turned 17 just a few months after the Selective Service announced that there'd be no further draft calls for U.S. Kennedy, and continued through the '60s and into the Vietnam War. For their children, my parents, their awareness of a bigger, wider world beyond themselves indelibly shifted the day Lee Harvey Oswald ascended to the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas to shoot and kill President John F. For my grandparents, who were either learning to crawl or were taking their first steps during the Great Depression, it was World War II, irrespective of the few-year age gap between them. With so many dubious milestones to choose from, what will stick out the most? Will we be able to recall distinct moments, or just that our lives changed in ways many of us never expected?Ī long our journey in life, impactful historical mile markers tend to set the generational tone of our collective trek. It goes without saying that we will be thinking about the impacts of this year and the pandemic for generations to come. ![]()
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