Every generation has that moment when their world suddenly changed. My kids remember the Challenger disaster, my older grandchildren when the Twin Towers came down. I still remember where I was when I heard the news that president Kennedy had been shot. For my parent's generation it was Pearl Harbor, the day that lives in infamy. We've taken to calling them "the Greatest Generation," a designation that is appropriately honorific but perhaps a bit overstated in some respects. After all, it was my parents' generation that raised the kids who would drop acid and drop out, extol "Free Love," which has left us with broken homes, shattered communities, and epidemic STDs, among a host of other ills.
Nonetheless, it was this generation that rising from the depths of the Great Depression, defeated Nazism, Fascism, and Japanese militarism. I've listened to their stories, memories that blessed and haunted them for more than fifty years, and have never ceased to be amazed at what they accomplished. The price they paid and the sacrifices they made were enormous, but they refused to give up, and my world was and is different because of them.
Just last weekend we spent the day with my family. My 93 year old mother and her younger (88?) sister ruled as benevolent matriarchs over the bedlam of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who were wrapping the gifts we had bought for a couple underprivileged families. Both these women were young once, slender and beautiful, in love with military men: my father who remained stateside during the war, and my uncle who flew the Hump in Burma. They are old now, with all the difficulties that eight and nine decades of life inflict upon them. They raised their families, and in my opinion, did a pretty good job of it. We gather for a reunion of cousins each summer, and as siblings throughout the year. That we are free to do so is a gift my parents' generation bestowed upon us.
We live in equally dangerous times today, and appear to be as unready to meet international challenges as they were in the forties. My parents' generation rose to the challenge over seventy years ago. My generation did the same forty years ago, facing the enemy in Vietnam and protesters at home. This Pearl Harbor Day I am grateful for and honor their sacrifices, and pray that we will once again rise to the challenges of this day with faith and courage so that years from now my children and grandchildren will be able to gather with their families as I did last week with mine.
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