The Greatest Generation Is Slipping Away

Today marks the 104th anniversary of my father’s birth. Although he left us 15 years ago, the void he left behind is still deeply felt. However, the purpose of this post is not to dwell on my personal emotions. Instead, I want to reflect upon the collective loss of what Tom Brokaw eloquently dubbed, “The Greatest Generation.” Like so many individuals of his generation, who came into this world during the era of the First World War, my dad was conscripted into the Second World War, where he dutifully and proudly served.

As a professional musician, he spent the war playing in an Army Big Band, entertaining his fellow soldiers. Sometimes I sensed he felt a touch of survivor’s guilt, knowing that his situation could have changed at any moment and he could have been on the front lines. Why was he so lucking, while so many others were not? He remembered the day President Roosevelt died and recalled it to me repeatedly. The news shook him and the other soldiers – what would become of the war effort and the nation without FDR’s leadership? I think of the tone of his voice and the expression on his face when he said these things. It helps me grasp the depth of the connection people at the time felt with FDR. A connection I doubt I could begin to grasp without seeing it in my dad.

Dad’s unit was in Colorado when heavyweight champion Joe Louis visited. Dad had a huge smile recalling the story. Louis didn’t have to spend time with the regular guys, but he did, making all of them feel important when Louis brushed aside an attempt to pull him away for dinner with the officers. Later, my dad was in Okinawa when they heard the news of the atomic bomb. Everyone knew an invasion of mainland Japan would be a bloodbath beyond all bloodbaths. They cheered when Hiroshima went up in a mushroom cloud, believing the war was over, and even started a spontaneous parade to celebrate. An officer shut them down for getting everyone’s hopes up. The officer turned out to be right and it took another bomb dropped on Nagasaki for Japan to finally surrender.

Recently, at a Minnesota Twins game, I watched a veteran, a man in his late 90s who’d entered the Army at 17, raise the flag during the anthem. When I looked up the declining numbers of WWII veterans, I was stunned. Less than 100,000 remain and we’ll lose almost all of them in the next decade. Few people will have the first hand opportunity I had, to better understand that tumultuous time through the words and feelings of the people that actually lived it.

The men and women who witnessed humanity’s darkest impulses, yet also its greatest triumphs, have countless lessons to teach us, but little time left to do it. They helped establish a new world order that, despite flaws, has given us more than seven decades of relative global peace (no matter what conspiracy theorists and other crackpots might tell you about how we are being “enslaved,” ever so slowly, by the globalists). As the Greatest Generation fades, the responsibility to protect democracy and fight against harmful ideologies falls on our shoulders. It’s a task made far more urgent as we witness the return of extremist ideas that our fathers and grandfathers fought to defeat. Will we step up to the challenge? Do we even know how? Perhaps if we had learned more from their experiences we would.