My generation, as tough as it is, will never touch those now in their 70s, 80s or 90s in class, character, or grace under pressure.
I’m not the most patriotic guy around. And I respect, but do not worship, peacetime or off-duty soldiers, sailors, firemen and police officers. Most people, average people of any generation, are capable of great physical courage at the right primal times. None of us (with the exception of some professional combatants in jungles, deserts and fields over the centuries) should be celebrated for that alone. Think about it. Consider what mothers will do. What bystanders often do. Read Stephen Crane. Physically, we all seem to rise to the occasion.
I am amazed what average people can do with their love, grit and simple adrenaline in a life-threatening pinch.
I think hard about November 11th when it comes. Veterans’ Day, for me, is not just about generations who served in the armed forces, in my family and other families, in the U.S. over the 240 years. It’s about the American men and women born roughly between 1912 and 1932: the so-called Greatest Generation.
They are my parents (who barely made the “cut”), my parents’ older friends, and the parents of other baby boomers like me. My models growing up in Washington, DC, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio, they–and their own parents–steered us all through the Depression and World War II, and rebuilt the American economy, with grit, hard work and genuine class. They refused to be cowed or distracted by hard economic times, or by the enduring grief and nightmares of two appallingly bloody world wars–the last of which many still live with daily and in stoic silence.
