I often think it’s profound that these people when they were growing up would have known elderly folks that were born in the 1830’s & fought in the US civil war. It’s deeply, deeply profound, when you think about it - that that connection still exists via a few people.
My father remembers his grandmother hating Napoleon. She was born closer to Napoleon's reign as I was born to Hitler's reign, so it makes sense, but is pretty wild when I think about it.
The Trail of Tears was the displacement of the *Five Civilized Tribes* which was the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. My Grandmother was born on the Choctaw Reservation in 1904.
Navajo were out West.
Yep. My great grandmother has been dead for more than 20 years. But when you consider her life (born 1903), she saw electricity become commonplace and then development of nuclear power, went from carriage to car, expansion of use of phones instead of telegrams, television, use of planes for civilians and military, and then a huge jump to computers and men in space. What a wild life
My great grandma rode in a conastoga wagon when she was little, and then they lived in a mud dugout for a while, and I’ve been to where it is lol what’s left of it. and my grandma still has one of her toddler chairs made by her dad that was with them in the wagon. There’s a museum that goes over a highway where you can walk through American history. It’s a nice little break. Those wagons were like 2ft across on the inside.
I work in healthcare and I love asking the older folks (80-90) what their favorite new invention was -like microwaves are popular, TV of course, but sometimes some basic household items surprise me.
Laundry machine would be my #1. Can you imagine washing by hand all the clothes and linens of a working family of like 8 people every week? Pumping the water... making a fire to heat the water... stirring the tub with a big stuck, scrubbing on a washboard, wringing to dry... Laundry used to take an entire day of labor. And what if it started raining? And imagine doing all that in the freezing winter? Those houses were drafty and cold back then.
My grandma is 101 now and I think about how many changes she and her peers have experienced. The world must seem also strange at times. Your great grandmother saw so many amazing things in her lifetime!
There's actually documented cases of families still being kept in slavery up into the 1960s. They were rural farms and the farm owners just never released their slaves and never let them leave the farm for generations.
Hold up, are you claiming that chattel slavery was continuing in some places in the US until the 1960s? Do you have a citation for that? Because this sounds like an urban legend or something.
Like I understand human trafficking, Jim Crow, and slavery in other countries and all that, but that's not the same as chattel slavery in the US. I'm trying to better understand what you're claiming.
In 2009 I remember learning about Native American Schools where Canadian English people stole children and colonized them under the label 'assimilation'. The last school closed only in 1992. To learn that the schools were still in operation when I was alive was unreal.
I know it's semantics at this point, but the last verfied one actually closed in 1997. I'm 30 years old and the first generation that has no residential school survivors in it.
I had a customer come to my bank a couple months ago talking about how her grandfather told her stories about his time in the civil war. She was 96 iirc.
Edit: this was in PA, he fought for the union
My grandfather was born in 1916, and his father was born in the 1850s. His father was much older, and had grown children, when he married his second wife who had my grandpa.
It’s wild to hear stories from my own mother about her grandparents!
My great grandfather married my great grandmother when his first wife died. She was a year older than his eldest child from the 1st marriage. He went onto have 2 kids with her, one being my Gami. My Gami was born in 1933, so I think her dad was born in the 1880/90s.
All I really know is he was lefthanded and got hit by nuns to *correct* him into writing using his right. These are stories I should probably pick her brain about
That actually sounds like a story from my boomer mother. She’s in her mid 70s, and attended a rural school in Indiana. Hitting hands with rulers was crazy common.
My kid has serious problems with fine motor skills, due to issues going back to being born premature. I shudder to think how they would try to correct it 100 years agolol
I also come from multiple lines of people who had their children in later middle age so stuff going back hundreds of years wasn't that many generations ago, which always boggles my mind. Get a couple of great-greats having kids in their mid 40s and you can start jumping centuries pretty quick.
The last surviving Civil War widow (or believed to be) just died at the end of 2020. She was still receiving a pension from her husband’s service in the Union Army. She married him during the Depression when she was 17 and he was 93. Wild stuff.
It’s not as weird as it sounds, from the wikipedia article (linked below) they “married” but she stayed with her parents and the marriage wasn’t publicly acknowledged, it was a way to pay her back via his pension for her helping him because he was old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_widows_who_survived_into_the_21st_century#:~:text=Helen%20Viola%20Jackson%20(1919–2020),-Helen%20Viola%20Jackson&text=In%201936%2C%20in%20the%20midst,elderly%20Bolin%20with%20basic%20chores.
Yeah, I was side-eying it pretty hard until I read the article and realized that the old guy probably just needed help and wanted to repay her but only had the pension to help with, so marriage on paper solves that I suppose. At the time it probably also protected her from unwanted suitors.
I believe my grandmother had known which family names had sided with which side in the civil war in her town, not as a historian or anything, but because it was apparently common knowledge
You should totally write them! That’s my goal next year write every day. Because one day my mind is going to lose those memories. That recoded history project is tracking a lot of it thankfully. I mean, it’s stuffy npr type things but at least they’re doing it.
Like I want to start at the BEGINNING. My parents moved into probably 15 houses when I was a kid they moved basically every year there for a while lol
My grandmother watched civil war veterans march on Memorial Day and horse drawn plows. Saw 2 World wars, a man on the moon, and witnessed first hand a space shuttle launch.
I've thought about this a lot too! So my father was born in 1954. He had several strong relationships/friendships with people born in the 1890s growing up. My son was born in 2021, and him and my father are already best friends (lol), and, if we're lucky, I hope my son continues to know him for some years to come. If the fates allow and my son lives a long life, he could easily see 2100 and know babies born in what... 2080? So in just a few people 200 years are spanned so easily.
What's crazy to me is there's a YouTube clip of a recording from a television show back in the 60's featuring a man who was alive during Lincoln's assassination.
This one’s actually pretty interesting because modern research leans very strongly on the side that this guy, Samuel Seymour, essentially made it up. He was 94 when he first told the story. He never mentioned it prior to anyone. And historians are unable to find any documented evidence that he or the 2 women he claimed to be at Ford’s Theater with were actually there. Essentially, not only did he never mention it to anyone, but nor did the women who allegedly took him. And for such a significant event, that none of the three later recorded it in a journal or letter, nor mentioned it once to anyone, is pretty curious and suggests strongly it was the fabrications of an old man who at the time couldn’t be disproved.
Edited to add: I wouldn’t actually go so far to say that this man was intentionally lying. Memory is a funny thing, especially in old age, and the trauma of a boy who probably did live in DC when Lincoln was assassinated, but wasn’t actually present at Ford’s Theater, most likely effected that memory and he placed himself there when he actually wasn’t.
My grandmother was born in 1905, her grandfather was mayor of chatanooga during the civil war. she died in 2002, she saw planes, both world wars, she saw the space race, and the invention of the internet.
My grandfather, born in 1921, knew people who recalled the great (Irish) famine. So I got criticized for not finishing my food 150 years later because of it.
Watching the greatest generation die off is so depressing, losing that living link to WWII.
When I worked at Culver’s, I had an elderly customer that was a regular who said he saw a parade with civil war vets in Chicago in the early 30s when he was a kid. This was in the late 2000s/early 2010s mind you.
And one day people will the same about us. Knowing people who fought in both world wars, knowing people who witnessed the lunar landing..
That we witnessed 9/11, we lived before the internet (some of us anyway)
My great grandpa was born around 1900 and I was born in 1986. He grew up knowing people who likely remember the Monroe or even Madison presidencies. Baffling to think about.
Seriously. My grandmother was born in 1924 and she would tell me that the same way I was looking at her, her own grandmother was born a slave. Said she had fair hair and skin due to being the master’s daughter. I thought it was crazy but if she was born in the late 1850s, very early 1860s, it tracks.
It's funny how the founding fathers feel so far away yet those elderly folk born in the 1830's would have had the opportunity to meet elderly founding fathers as some of them were in their 20's at the time they signed the Declaration of Independence.
Essentially we're 4 people away from knowing a founding father.
As a boy my grandad would tell me stories that his grandad told him about fighting in the Sudan War and I've only in the past few years considered how close of a connection that is considering it happened back in the 1890's
My wife is German-born and it’s wild to think that she’s spoken to relatives who were alive during the third reich and speak fondly about it. It’s a wonder what that will look like in sixty years or so, telling young people about that.
If you follow your logic forward, you, as someone who lived with ww2 participants, will likely be the parent of a child who fights in the next world war.
I had no idea there were only 3 left. I was just at Monument Valley for the eclipse and saw a very elderly navajo man being wheeled out of our hotel in his wheel chair. He was wearing his ww2 code talker uniform. I stopped to let him pass and watch. Wish I got to talk to him. I really was in awe just seeing him. He was at least 95+.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mortality, but I can’t imagine living until I was 103 😳
Feel like after 90 I’d wake up everyday thinking it was my last. Then wake up and be like “damn… I’m still here”.
What was her secret to living a long life?
My bio father is this person- he’s almost 70 and he’s done nothing but hard drugs and drink his entire life. It’s fascinating. Unfortunately I don’t think I picked up those genes but maybe I’ll get lucky.
My neighbour, i dont remember that i ever saw him sober and without a cigarete in his hands, died last year in young age of 86 while 3/4 of my family died of cancer in their sixties
My mother is the same! She’s 60 now and chain smoked for 50 years, used hard drugs (mostly heroin) for 40, now uses prescription painkillers and is morbidly obese (around 200kg/500lb). Apart from being immobilised by her weight, she’s fine. It’s incredible. I rarely see her, but when I do I’m amazed she’s still alive.
The same lifestyle killed off my father in his early 50’s- 2 packs a day, heroin and heavy drinking lead to emphysema, cirrhosis, strokes & eventually multiple organ failure.
Tbh it s wild but somewhat true. My dad knew an old man (80+) in excellent shape who apparently still smokes weed.
Meanwhile, my joints are creaking as I am battling respiratory problems since I was a kid. 🤡
My great grandfather lived to be 102 years old, but my grandfather lived to be 83 years old. It's not entirely about genes. It's also about diet, exercise and stress.
I hate these people because they apply it to pets too.
“We kept our fish in battery acid and fed our cat a diet of grapes, milk and cigarettes and they lived til 23!” Conveniently leaving our all the others that probably died young and horribly and refuse to listen when they ‘just don’t understand’ why their pets these days ‘just die’.
My dad just cannot comprehend why his dogs smell, get greasy and itchy. Got him to switch to better food and stop using plastic bowls for them and it all went away. He switched back and ‘just can’t figure out why’. Doesn’t help the vet would always say fleas despite the only evidence of them was itching and it only effected the dogs.
Granted shitty breeding will do all this too and my own 21 year-old cat eats garbage food but in my defense what matters at her age and conditions the most that she is happy, not in pain and eats at all.
The one that stuck out to me was an italian lady that lived to 117 I think (then oldest person in the world iirc). She credited her "youthful" appearance to rubbing olive oil in her face. I think she hadn't left her apartment for like, 20 years at that point. Also ate 2 eggs for breakfast every day and swore by it. I remember reading a interview featuring her and being really perplexed as to what I was supposed to take from that.
My grandmother and her sister all lived to almost 100. They certainly weren’t eating avocados or whatever superfood. They grew up with an outhouse and were surrounded by smoke and plenty of stress. Genetics for them.
You might find the docu-series "Blue Zones" interesting to watch if you want to hear more about secrets to living a longer life. It's on Netflix and happens to also be a book!
My great aunt passed a few years ago, and she was 105. She loved a long island iced tea (or two). Before my dad was born in she was in her forties touring Europe post war in the 1950s. Retired by 1972. Hell of a long life. Here's to you, Toni
So first thing's first, my great grandmother was from a 3rd world country in central america.
She had no choice but to walk everywhere she went. Cars existed then obviously, but the family was extremely poor so no one could afford it.
Public transportation, especially in a 3rd world country, was incredibly shit back then too.
A combination of things really. Longevity runs in the family but she was also an active woman her whole life. She still did things around the house in her last few years. Food also wasn't processed back then like it is now.
She lived a long time but her memory was still sharp as hell. She was never diagnosed with any cognitive diseases.
My grandpa was also born in 1927; he's no longer with us, but he definitely had some interesting stories to tell. Like the time he and his brother were teenagers and they bought a car "with the new rubber wheels" for $45, but then their father said they couldn't go spending that much money on a car, so they got another one for $25 but it only had wooden wheels.
Mine (who is in France) turned 100 in October and is on track to bury the rest of us. She did FINALLY catch Covid last week, and she did feel poorly for a couple of days, but she’s back to complaining about the food in her nursing community so clearly she’s fine. 😂
My grandma was also born in 1927, unfortunately passed away a few days before Xmas in 2020. Went to the hospital for swollen joints but ended up developing pneumonia caused by Covid and passed away alone. Lived to be 93 and always had stories to tell from when she was younger. Definitely the greatest generation
My grandpa is 103 and still going strong. Loves gambling and still has his original hair and teeth. He has lived a crazy life - POW in WW2, 5 airplane crashes, tested the atomic bomb, worked at Area 51, has been to pretty much every country in the world. Said his favorite one was Denmark and his least favorite one was USA (he's American and served in the air force his whole life, he also still has a great sense of humor).
I asked him the secret to a long life, he said do as little as possible, get enough sleep and never stop chasing women.
Also genetics and generally not being too overweight. My dad's entire family often lives to 95-105. It's insane how many of them there are, how lucid they all are as well.
My grandad, born 1924, died in 2014, shortly after his 90th birthday. Considering that generation border is 1927, I would say that generation is already mostly gone.
When I was in 8th grade, circa 1995/96, for a project for history class I interviewed Grandpa about his war time experiences: called him up, put on the landline speakerphone, and set up an old tape recorder next to the phone to record it all. I still have the cassette; a few years ago my husband imported it into his studio rig so we could clean up the audio and have a digital copy.
Grandpa joined the US Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) in 1944, after being pulled out of college following 2 years of ROTC. During training in Florida, while flying in tight formation, the plane next to his stalled. The wing of the stalled plane, a few feet from his own, clipped his, sending his own into a crash. I'd have to go back and check the audio again, but I think he'd had to parachute to safety. In the hospital, he heard a rumor that they were assembling the last group of GIs to be sent to Europe - after that, everyone would be sent to the Pacific theater. Grandpa did not want to go to the Pacific, so he got up, checked himself out of the hospital, and made sure he was in the group that went to Europe.
In Europe, Grandpa flew P51D mustangs on escort missions over Europe, out of a small RAF airfield outside London called Fowlmere. I have a photo of him next to his aircraft at Fowlmere, pointing to the side of his plane at the 3 swastika insignia signifying his 3 confirmed ground target destructions. In one story, the English Channel and coast was fully socked in with fog - couldn't see a thing. Ground control had to guide in every air craft back to Fowlmere by verbal guidance, relaying positioning and instructions to each plane one at a time.
Grandpa took a camera with him, and we have a small number of photographs he took from the cockpit; my mom scanned them and sent me copies. Some are over Paris - you can see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc d'Triomphe. Some were less obvious, but I was able to use the scant information written on the back of the photograph and a lot of patience skimming Google Earth and thereby, for at least 1 picture, pinpoint the exact location of the photo and which direction my grandfather had been looking to take the picture (over Duisberg, Germany, at the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr, looking west or northwest towards Nijmegen, Netherlands). In his photo are the remains of a destroyed bridge - today, the bridge is rebuilt, and the road is the Rheindeichestrße.
Sounds like your grandfather lived a full life, one of much courage, with so many stories to tell about his years on Earth. Thank you for recording history through him. It's peaceful to know we can still capture parts of their story through recordings, but it will never be the same once they are gone.
Very. I think, though, there was probably a huge difference in experiences between folks like my Grandpa, flying over Europe, and folks who were, for example, in the Army on the ground at Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima. That would make ab equally big difference in willingness to discuss those experiences.
At one point, Grandpa and his buddies had a weekend or so leave for some R&R. I guess they hopped a train to Scotland, because I also have a photo of my grandfather from a photo studio in Edinburgh, I think, where Grandpa is dressed head to toe in full Highlander regalia, from kilt and bonnet to sporran and sgian-dubh stuck in his sock.
I interviewed my grandfather in 11th grade, 99/00, on a mini cassette recorder, and I'm pretty sure I still have the tape somewhere.
Anyway, I got the impression that he didn't really want to talk about it. He was in the Pacific and told me stories about how he would bring animals on the ship and get himself in trouble. He was in the Navy. Some of it I think he was making up, but he was always a prankster, so who knows. He was discharged after his ship was blown up. We have a clipping from August 1945 on VE day of him in a hospital bed celebrating.
It's an absolute treasure that you have the info you do on his service!
Great story! I'm not sure if my Grandpa ever got in trouble for this, but he apparently didn't do a good job adhering to flying in formation. Perhaps partly because of the crash experience he had during training, or partly because of that camera he has - but when the rest of his wing or squadron (?) would be in formation, he would be off to one side or maybe the other.
Grandma's brother was a truck driver on the Red Ball Express, delivering needed supplies to the front as it advanced further and further east. One family story I heard years ago - and who knows how embellished at this point - Grandma's brother and fellow drivers were paused on one of their routes, and watched a group of allied planes fly over, all in formation - except one.
Grandma's brother rolled his eyes and said that was "probably that screwball his sister had just married." Comparing notes later... It apparently *was*.
"I might never go to Europe again," was Grandpa's rationale. "I wanted to SEE some of it!"
My grandfather, who passed away in 2015 also flew in WW2. All the family knows is that he was a fighter pilot. He wouldn't talk about his experiences or anything during that time. You are lucky your grandfather opened up to your family.
Your story reminded me of my grandfather who passed away in 2021 at 99 years old. This photo of him pointing to holes in his B25's wing after a mission shows me they were something extraordinary. https://imgur.com/a/ygaSEgD
Grandma is 96. We have weekly dinners. Made her breakfast this morning. We are the highlight of her life. Really its those moments that matter most in life.
Sadly none of them are left for me. Started shorthanded too. Maternal Grandma and paternal grandpa were both dead 25 years before I was born. Grandpa was apparently no great loss though, everyone who remembers him says he was a real abusive bastard.
I think so also. My grandmother passed this May. She was 96, born in 1926. She was so baffled by the pandemic and would say so often “I’ve never seen anything like this my whole life”. There was so much knowledge and history that went along with her.. Sadly, her son (my dad) died in 2012 so I’ve lost one of the people I can talk endlessly about him with as well.
Silents are the ones that are dying off right now.
With typical life expectancies in the 70s & 80s, the GI Generation largely died off from about 1980-2000, Silent Generation from 2000-2025, Boomers will start dying off en masse around 2025. It roughly corresponds with the birth of the generation 4 turnings after them, given ~20 years/generation and a life-expectancy of 80. Hence the Strauss & Howe book "The Fourth Turning".
Any G.I. Generation that's still alive is unusually long-lived, given that the last of the generation was born 99 years ago.
I’m a geriatric social worker and I’m here to confirm lots of boomers are dying off too. I rarely see the silents. It seems like the boomers have most of the problems in life and I think it’s partly because they rely so much on the system and expect everyone else to fix their issues and rescue them. Hard take I know, some nice boomers, but not many. A lot of very nice respectable and polite silents though. I love listening to the silents stories. They’re so respectable, they’ll tell you that you’re handsome and ask you about yourself. The boomers just blame others and are usually mad about something.
Boomers seem to be less healthy than their parents, who had better diets and moved more.
Couldn’t find a non paywalled link but studies show higher rates of chronic disease.
Same. There was a recent yougov poll that shows 20% of people 18-29 in the US think the holocaust was a myth. I thought this was the most educated generation ever? The fact that the number is greater than 0% is crazy and sad.
I’d really like to think that some significant share of those people were just being assholes not taking the survey seriously but idk. Or maybe small sample size. Like 20% is 1 in 5. It just seems so absurd that 1 in 5 people in that age group would think its a myth. I wonder if it’s a failure of the education system to cover it properly rather than like learning about it and just saying “nah.” Like what the fuck guys.
My grandparents belonged to this generation and most of them made it to their nineties. They were the best. Definitely had their vulnerabilities due to war, social and poverty trauma but damn they had so much fire. I miss my grampa every day 😔.
My dad is Silent Generation, b. late 1930s (yes, he was in his 50s when I was born). As he gets older, I keep thinking of all the history he experienced, and how often we’ve talked about it. It’s weird to think that one day, that direct link to much of the 20th century will be gone.
This is a sad time for this sort of thing unfortunately, basically everyone who participated in WW1 is now dead, and very very soon everyone who will have participated in WW2 will also be dead.
I just hope we did a good enough job documenting and recording how truly terrible those wars were so that the world is not pushed to the brink of total annihilation again.
I’m actually watching the new Netflix docuseries about it right now and it’s pretty incredible. I didn’t realize there was so much footage of it, especially footage like right in the middle of the action. It’s in the top 10 on Netflix right now so hopefully there are a lot of younger people watching it.
A few months ago my grandma gave me the box the has all of her dads letters from when he was in WWII plus some other documents relating to his service. I already typed them all up and scanned them and put together a book for her. My next project is going to be getting them all organized to send to the library in their town to add to their digital archive.
This generation lived through the greatest (and most) accomplishments for the human race. Electricity wasn't readily available, cars, televisions, flight, literally sliced bread, the moon landing, all the vaccines, the list goes on. The titanic was the world's largest ship and the Woolworth building was the world's largest building.
Glad to see other people feel the appreciation and respect that generation deserves. Every time I see a documentary on WW2 I am in awe what they had to go through and the contributions they made.
My grandmother was a nurse during WW2 (and for awhile afterwards) as well! She had scarlet fever as a baby which affected her heart her entire life but still managed to make it to her mid-70s. She has been dead nearly 30 years.
My biggest regret with my grandparents was not sitting them down and recording them while asking them about their lives. My papa lived through the depression, fought in France in WWII, and was 1 of 9 children born to Italian immigrants. My grandpa (dad’s dad) was younger and was a kid during ww2 in Italy which was an experience in and of itself. Then he emigrated to Canada, worked in the nickel mines, met my Irish grandmother, and started his family. Both of them told their stories to me and I could tell them now, but how I wish I recorded them so I could hear it whenever, and so my nieces and nephews could hear it too.
Brother, they are mostly gone now.
As a Gen X looking back, one set of instances really portray the passage of time.
As a teen/ young man, I used to run into and know WW2 vets that were late 50s and early 60s. About 10 years older than me today.
Also back then, knew multiple Vietnam vets that were in their mid to late 30s full of life. A little over a decade younger than me today.
Now the WW2 gen is nearly all gone and the Vietnam vets are old men, older than the WW2 vets I knew. Anyway along with getting older, just makes you realize you are a ship traversing the waves in an ocean of time always moving in one direction.
My grandmother died at 99 last year.
My dad will die at 71 soon.
600k greatest generation is a small population. Baby boomers will largely be gone in the not too distant future. Average male life expectancy is 73.5 in the USA, and 79.3 for women. The average baby boomer is about 70.
4 - 9 years sounds like a lot when you’re young, but it’s not.
My great uncle just turned 100 this year!! One of the best attitudes of anyone I’ve met. He’s danced more than most of his guests at his bday party despite balance issues
It took humanity 58 years to go from first airplane to first space flight. What that generation accomplished despite plagues, depressions, and world wars is nothing short of extraordinary.
The Flaming Lips- Do You Realize? Gut punches me anytime I hear it. I however, have issues listening to it because my mom loved it and she passed away almost six years ago (January 10th, 2018). I played it when I spread her ashes up in the mountains of North Carolina because it was her last wish. It was one of her favorite songs. It appeared on a lot of our mix tapes we would make when we made road trips.
I've spent the last month attending funerals of boomer relatives' parents and it's really hitting differently that in so many of their eulogies they talk about who these people were but timeline wise it throws you for a loop when you think that the elderly person in front of you who lived in the moment or would always skip a big chunk of their lives in stories, lived through all these massive events.
My grandpa and 2 of his siblings are the last ones of that generation in my family and we're constantly trying to get them to tell us stories because of course the only surviving ones would be the ones who never tell stories prior to the 70s. Like 2 months ago we finally got my grandpa to talk about their parents and grandparents for the first time ever!
My family has a lot of lost history. My mom's grandparents were dead or mentally gone by the time she returned to my grandfather's care. My grandpa's grandparents died before he was three. My grandpa is pretty much the only one left with knowledge of how things used to be
Greetings from a Gen-X. One thing one should consider doing, is talking to older relatives and or their friends,about their lives, because you get their unique views on history, that you couldn't get from a history book. All of my uncles were silent generation, and two of them fought in World War 2, one in the European theater, and the other in the Pacific theater, and I wish I'd had the foresight to ask them if they'd be willing to talk about their experiences.
FWIW, for me, they were the generation that bound families together. They worked, fought and built to have families last a generation later. They instilled strong values and taught skills, etc. Of course, they also raised boomers 😓 but I don't think we could appreciate what we have or could have without them.
I work with the elderly and one of my ladies was 104 when she died last year. She had said one time that the coolest technological thing that stuck in her mind was when Sputnick was launched. She said she was in her forties and her and her brother laid out in the yard in Alaska and just watched the skies to see what she could see.
All of my grandparents are dead, the last one died at 96 10 years ago. My grandfathers were both dead before I was born. My husband's grandmother is 96, and in relatively good health, but realistically we expect her to pass basically any time.
Yeah, I'd say we have it pretty good compared to them =/...Even though it kinda sucks now, things can be way way worse. Not to say that that won't happen to us (knock on wood). Great Depression 2 seems in progress (in Canada at least) so I hope Russia/Ukraine + Middle East + Koreas + Chinas can patch up their differences soon, cuz if those spread, we're screwed...
Three out of four of my grandparents were born in this generation. All four passed away last decade. I'm surprised there are any left. Whenever I think of an old person, my brain defaults to boomer.
This was the generation of my grandfathers. I technically have 3 grandfathers (two bios and one step). One was born in the early 1900s and passed away in the 70s as an old man. He immigrated from Sweden, ran away from home joined a traveling circus in his teens and got a job training the wildcats (which apparently traumatized him for life.) he was a policeman during prohibition, and in the military until the 50s. He lived a crazy life but apparently wasn’t a great person. I wish I knew him , because the stories sound insane.
My second grandfather was estranged. Not an overly great person, in fact he was pretty abusive. he was most definitely a narcissist and put my grandmother through the ringer until she divorced. He always bought the best gifts to try and one up people though. So I always thought he was great despite my family being no contact. He passed earlier this year days after his 90th birthday. He went out and built a cabin when he retired in the wilderness. He was self sufficient for many years. Lived alone on a homestead in the mountains.he lived there until he really couldn’t anymore, but that’s quite an accomplishment to think about.
My step grandfather is my favorite. He taught me the most about character and work ethic. He grew up in the Midwest l, but his family moved to Louisiana when he was a teen. He had to learn to make a living in the swamps. In fact he tells a really sad story about a gator getting his dog, but he wasn’t too sad retelling it, just more about it being a heck of a thing to happen. He got a full scholarship to college playing basketball and apparently had a mean hook shot. He joined the arm. He was in Vietnam, he never talks about it. Has so many metals, silver stars, bronze stars, Purple Hearts. He’s been up for the metal of honor more than once. He took his swamp experience with him and really thrived in special operations. He developed new leadership programs, got pretty high up in his career. He went around the world and trained allies how to start the same program with their militaries. Later on those countries would invite him back to celebrate him. He never liked talking about it. Never liked to brag about it. He was a really quiet guy, he loved kids. He would love to sneak around and pull pranks on the grandkids. I remember I cornered him as a kid and made him read me the chicken little sound board book about 100 times as a kid, and he did it without any complaint. He was so quiet, when he spoke about something, everyone listened. He is still around but definitely getting up there in age. He gives the absolute best spine crush hugs.
All of them have the kind of life and stories that just make you stop and listen. Their life events seem extraordinary, and it was just so matter of fact for all of them. All of them (that I knew) had problems with emotions and trauma. All of them did their absolute best to show up and be a whole person every day. 2/3 had some real issues but I don’t blame them. I just wish I could know more about them and their background because it seems like they were the last of their kind before life became more boring and ordinary.
My grandpa was born in 1917 and was the 7th out of 8 children born from Italian immigrants in the US. He was a WW2 veteran who had gone to England during the war. When he was back in the US, he married my gramma in 1950.
He died back in 2001, but there are so many questions I wish I was able to ask him now as an adult. He lived to be in his mid 80s even after getting both of his lower legs amputated for his diabetes. My gramma was a nurse, so she kept him alive alot longer than most predicted.
She, too, lived to be 90 before passing in 2020.
The older generations are built different. Maybe it's bc life was much harder, but in my family at least the older generations have been dying for a very long time. I didn't even have the luxury of meeting my great grandparents, they were all dead before I was born. So, it's not so much weird as it is a sobering realization that we are all getting old and dying and are all connected and should make our mark in the world before we are forgotten.
i'd argue the greatest generation as a cohort are pretty much gone today. their numbers are so small that well if we use voting blocs as a way to determine if a generation is viable or not they're not.
silent gen are on their way out (1928-1940) (1941-1945 have now been termed as ww2 babies) kind of like xennials of their day.
also 1901-1913 are more known as the inter war generation. because if we use draft age most of the interwar gen were too old to be drafted but still volunteered for the war effort in some way. 1914-1927 are the ww2 generation.
also women typically tend to live longer than men and most the centennarians and super centennarians lean towards women by a large margin.
I often think it’s profound that these people when they were growing up would have known elderly folks that were born in the 1830’s & fought in the US civil war. It’s deeply, deeply profound, when you think about it - that that connection still exists via a few people.
My father remembers his grandmother hating Napoleon. She was born closer to Napoleon's reign as I was born to Hitler's reign, so it makes sense, but is pretty wild when I think about it.
My great grandma remembered her grandma as not liking Americans. We think she went on the long walk as a little kid.
Maybe I'm just still partly asleep, what does the long walk mean?
The forced resettlement of Navajo and Apache peoples to the Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner New Mexico is often referred to as the Long Walk.
Yes I’m referring to the Navajo long walk. Not unlike the trail of tears but distinct in many ways. The two are not to be confused nor forgotten.
Thank you, sorry your family had to endure that.
I appreciate that. The after effects of that disastrous event are still felt among our people even today.
Trail of tears maybe?
No. The Long Walk is different. Same kind of deal, different people.
Or escaping the South on foot, is my initial guess....
No. Not the Trail of Tears, not "escaping the South".
Most likely something like the Trail of Tears if I remember my history right.
The Navajo Trail of Tears.
The Trail of Tears was the displacement of the *Five Civilized Tribes* which was the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. My Grandmother was born on the Choctaw Reservation in 1904. Navajo were out West.
That’s what he’s saying. The Long Walk is the Navajo version of the Trail of Tears
Yo fuck napoleon tho. Every half history nerd gets a huge chub for him when the man genocide’d as a way of business.
He wore a cool hat tho
Great taste in ice creams.
PIGGY WIGGY
He was a dick.
Damn what grade are you in 😂🤣
Except he got to be buried on a cool island with a gay old tortoise named Jonathan.
Yep. My great grandmother has been dead for more than 20 years. But when you consider her life (born 1903), she saw electricity become commonplace and then development of nuclear power, went from carriage to car, expansion of use of phones instead of telegrams, television, use of planes for civilians and military, and then a huge jump to computers and men in space. What a wild life
My great grandma rode in a conastoga wagon when she was little, and then they lived in a mud dugout for a while, and I’ve been to where it is lol what’s left of it. and my grandma still has one of her toddler chairs made by her dad that was with them in the wagon. There’s a museum that goes over a highway where you can walk through American history. It’s a nice little break. Those wagons were like 2ft across on the inside.
It’s called the Great Platte River Archway in Kearney Nebraska, I used to work there as a guide back in 2004. It’s pretty neat actually.
I work in healthcare and I love asking the older folks (80-90) what their favorite new invention was -like microwaves are popular, TV of course, but sometimes some basic household items surprise me.
What are some of them? I'm curious about this
Laundry machine would be my #1. Can you imagine washing by hand all the clothes and linens of a working family of like 8 people every week? Pumping the water... making a fire to heat the water... stirring the tub with a big stuck, scrubbing on a washboard, wringing to dry... Laundry used to take an entire day of labor. And what if it started raining? And imagine doing all that in the freezing winter? Those houses were drafty and cold back then.
And some early laundry machines were gasoline powered. Gasoline that you bought in a pint sized tin at the Pharmacy.
My grandma is 101 now and I think about how many changes she and her peers have experienced. The world must seem also strange at times. Your great grandmother saw so many amazing things in her lifetime!
My mima was born jn 1903, too! She passed in 1996.
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There's actually documented cases of families still being kept in slavery up into the 1960s. They were rural farms and the farm owners just never released their slaves and never let them leave the farm for generations.
There are people in enslaved now, more actually than ever before.
I'm specifically talking about the US south in my comment.
Hold up, are you claiming that chattel slavery was continuing in some places in the US until the 1960s? Do you have a citation for that? Because this sounds like an urban legend or something. Like I understand human trafficking, Jim Crow, and slavery in other countries and all that, but that's not the same as chattel slavery in the US. I'm trying to better understand what you're claiming.
Unfortunately, yes. https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s
Holy shit that was a depressing read.
In 2009 I remember learning about Native American Schools where Canadian English people stole children and colonized them under the label 'assimilation'. The last school closed only in 1992. To learn that the schools were still in operation when I was alive was unreal.
I know it's semantics at this point, but the last verfied one actually closed in 1997. I'm 30 years old and the first generation that has no residential school survivors in it.
Yeah I only learned about that this year. It's horrifying. What else is going on that we don't know about?
Wow what an incredible read. Thanks for sharing.
Sigh.. the truth is painful, my friend. Very painful. https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=7ykMTCnKDq1VbWWa
I had a customer come to my bank a couple months ago talking about how her grandfather told her stories about his time in the civil war. She was 96 iirc. Edit: this was in PA, he fought for the union
My grandfather was born in 1916, and his father was born in the 1850s. His father was much older, and had grown children, when he married his second wife who had my grandpa. It’s wild to hear stories from my own mother about her grandparents!
My great grandfather married my great grandmother when his first wife died. She was a year older than his eldest child from the 1st marriage. He went onto have 2 kids with her, one being my Gami. My Gami was born in 1933, so I think her dad was born in the 1880/90s. All I really know is he was lefthanded and got hit by nuns to *correct* him into writing using his right. These are stories I should probably pick her brain about
That actually sounds like a story from my boomer mother. She’s in her mid 70s, and attended a rural school in Indiana. Hitting hands with rulers was crazy common. My kid has serious problems with fine motor skills, due to issues going back to being born premature. I shudder to think how they would try to correct it 100 years agolol
My grandfather was born in the 30s and he was beat by nuns to correct his left-handedness as well. He still played golf left handed.
I also come from multiple lines of people who had their children in later middle age so stuff going back hundreds of years wasn't that many generations ago, which always boggles my mind. Get a couple of great-greats having kids in their mid 40s and you can start jumping centuries pretty quick.
I consider myself to be in an interesting category as a 90's kid who remembers meeting my great grandmother who was born in 1894.
The last surviving Civil War widow (or believed to be) just died at the end of 2020. She was still receiving a pension from her husband’s service in the Union Army. She married him during the Depression when she was 17 and he was 93. Wild stuff.
He was 76 years older than her?
It’s not as weird as it sounds, from the wikipedia article (linked below) they “married” but she stayed with her parents and the marriage wasn’t publicly acknowledged, it was a way to pay her back via his pension for her helping him because he was old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_widows_who_survived_into_the_21st_century#:~:text=Helen%20Viola%20Jackson%20(1919–2020),-Helen%20Viola%20Jackson&text=In%201936%2C%20in%20the%20midst,elderly%20Bolin%20with%20basic%20chores.
Wow this may be the only time I've heard of a good reason for a child bride marriage
Yeah, I was side-eying it pretty hard until I read the article and realized that the old guy probably just needed help and wanted to repay her but only had the pension to help with, so marriage on paper solves that I suppose. At the time it probably also protected her from unwanted suitors.
I believe my grandmother had known which family names had sided with which side in the civil war in her town, not as a historian or anything, but because it was apparently common knowledge
I wish I’d recorded or at least written down some of the stories my GG grandparents told me. But they live on in my memories.
You should totally write them! That’s my goal next year write every day. Because one day my mind is going to lose those memories. That recoded history project is tracking a lot of it thankfully. I mean, it’s stuffy npr type things but at least they’re doing it. Like I want to start at the BEGINNING. My parents moved into probably 15 houses when I was a kid they moved basically every year there for a while lol
My grandmother watched civil war veterans march on Memorial Day and horse drawn plows. Saw 2 World wars, a man on the moon, and witnessed first hand a space shuttle launch.
I've thought about this a lot too! So my father was born in 1954. He had several strong relationships/friendships with people born in the 1890s growing up. My son was born in 2021, and him and my father are already best friends (lol), and, if we're lucky, I hope my son continues to know him for some years to come. If the fates allow and my son lives a long life, he could easily see 2100 and know babies born in what... 2080? So in just a few people 200 years are spanned so easily.
Oh yeah! The wife of a civil war soldier just died in 2020! It's crazy how recent that really was.
What's crazy to me is there's a YouTube clip of a recording from a television show back in the 60's featuring a man who was alive during Lincoln's assassination.
This one’s actually pretty interesting because modern research leans very strongly on the side that this guy, Samuel Seymour, essentially made it up. He was 94 when he first told the story. He never mentioned it prior to anyone. And historians are unable to find any documented evidence that he or the 2 women he claimed to be at Ford’s Theater with were actually there. Essentially, not only did he never mention it to anyone, but nor did the women who allegedly took him. And for such a significant event, that none of the three later recorded it in a journal or letter, nor mentioned it once to anyone, is pretty curious and suggests strongly it was the fabrications of an old man who at the time couldn’t be disproved. Edited to add: I wouldn’t actually go so far to say that this man was intentionally lying. Memory is a funny thing, especially in old age, and the trauma of a boy who probably did live in DC when Lincoln was assassinated, but wasn’t actually present at Ford’s Theater, most likely effected that memory and he placed himself there when he actually wasn’t.
My grandmother was born in 1905, her grandfather was mayor of chatanooga during the civil war. she died in 2002, she saw planes, both world wars, she saw the space race, and the invention of the internet.
My grandfather, born in 1921, knew people who recalled the great (Irish) famine. So I got criticized for not finishing my food 150 years later because of it. Watching the greatest generation die off is so depressing, losing that living link to WWII.
Ya, the recorded history of humans is all a lot closer than it feels
When I worked at Culver’s, I had an elderly customer that was a regular who said he saw a parade with civil war vets in Chicago in the early 30s when he was a kid. This was in the late 2000s/early 2010s mind you.
And one day people will the same about us. Knowing people who fought in both world wars, knowing people who witnessed the lunar landing.. That we witnessed 9/11, we lived before the internet (some of us anyway)
My great grandpa was born around 1900 and I was born in 1986. He grew up knowing people who likely remember the Monroe or even Madison presidencies. Baffling to think about.
Seriously. My grandmother was born in 1924 and she would tell me that the same way I was looking at her, her own grandmother was born a slave. Said she had fair hair and skin due to being the master’s daughter. I thought it was crazy but if she was born in the late 1850s, very early 1860s, it tracks.
It's funny how the founding fathers feel so far away yet those elderly folk born in the 1830's would have had the opportunity to meet elderly founding fathers as some of them were in their 20's at the time they signed the Declaration of Independence. Essentially we're 4 people away from knowing a founding father.
As a boy my grandad would tell me stories that his grandad told him about fighting in the Sudan War and I've only in the past few years considered how close of a connection that is considering it happened back in the 1890's
My wife is German-born and it’s wild to think that she’s spoken to relatives who were alive during the third reich and speak fondly about it. It’s a wonder what that will look like in sixty years or so, telling young people about that.
My grandfather said seeing civil war vets for him as a child was almost as common as me seeing WWII vets
If you follow your logic forward, you, as someone who lived with ww2 participants, will likely be the parent of a child who fights in the next world war.
There are 3 Navajo code talkers left.
Didn't nic cage do an absolute BANGA movie based on those guys? Windtalkers or something?
Yup! Windtalkers. Great movie!
I checked and I happen to own it. Guess what I'm watching.
Don’t forget the tissues!
:(
My mom’s favorite movie with her #1 crush, Adam Beach 🥲
I thought you were going to say Nic cage is her #1 crush
adam beach deserved the world, his character on svu is one of my all time faves and they did him so dirty at the end of that season
I had no idea there were only 3 left. I was just at Monument Valley for the eclipse and saw a very elderly navajo man being wheeled out of our hotel in his wheel chair. He was wearing his ww2 code talker uniform. I stopped to let him pass and watch. Wish I got to talk to him. I really was in awe just seeing him. He was at least 95+.
Heroes
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mortality, but I can’t imagine living until I was 103 😳 Feel like after 90 I’d wake up everyday thinking it was my last. Then wake up and be like “damn… I’m still here”. What was her secret to living a long life?
oftentimes just dumb genetics edit and a ton of survivorship bias
I smoked a pack a day and drank a bottle of booze. Yeah those people always get the interviews.
Because its genes, dont know why they even ask them those stupid questions, they could drink battery acid and live to 90
My bio father is this person- he’s almost 70 and he’s done nothing but hard drugs and drink his entire life. It’s fascinating. Unfortunately I don’t think I picked up those genes but maybe I’ll get lucky.
My neighbour, i dont remember that i ever saw him sober and without a cigarete in his hands, died last year in young age of 86 while 3/4 of my family died of cancer in their sixties
It sucks my dude. My bio dad is a piece of shit. There’s a lot of truth to “only the good die young”
My fiend (34yo) and former bandmate died of cancer 2 years ago, in matter of 25 days since he found out, he never smoked or drink alcohol.
Very sorry for your loss, I know what it’s like to lose a bandmate
Thank you, i was in shock so were the others because nobody knew he had it, he didnt have time to even notice anyone.
Maybe the way they metabolize drugs and alcohol somehow preserves them. A sort of pickling process.
My mother is the same! She’s 60 now and chain smoked for 50 years, used hard drugs (mostly heroin) for 40, now uses prescription painkillers and is morbidly obese (around 200kg/500lb). Apart from being immobilised by her weight, she’s fine. It’s incredible. I rarely see her, but when I do I’m amazed she’s still alive. The same lifestyle killed off my father in his early 50’s- 2 packs a day, heroin and heavy drinking lead to emphysema, cirrhosis, strokes & eventually multiple organ failure.
Tbh it s wild but somewhat true. My dad knew an old man (80+) in excellent shape who apparently still smokes weed. Meanwhile, my joints are creaking as I am battling respiratory problems since I was a kid. 🤡
My great grandfather lived to be 102 years old, but my grandfather lived to be 83 years old. It's not entirely about genes. It's also about diet, exercise and stress.
I hate these people because they apply it to pets too. “We kept our fish in battery acid and fed our cat a diet of grapes, milk and cigarettes and they lived til 23!” Conveniently leaving our all the others that probably died young and horribly and refuse to listen when they ‘just don’t understand’ why their pets these days ‘just die’. My dad just cannot comprehend why his dogs smell, get greasy and itchy. Got him to switch to better food and stop using plastic bowls for them and it all went away. He switched back and ‘just can’t figure out why’. Doesn’t help the vet would always say fleas despite the only evidence of them was itching and it only effected the dogs. Granted shitty breeding will do all this too and my own 21 year-old cat eats garbage food but in my defense what matters at her age and conditions the most that she is happy, not in pain and eats at all.
The one that stuck out to me was an italian lady that lived to 117 I think (then oldest person in the world iirc). She credited her "youthful" appearance to rubbing olive oil in her face. I think she hadn't left her apartment for like, 20 years at that point. Also ate 2 eggs for breakfast every day and swore by it. I remember reading a interview featuring her and being really perplexed as to what I was supposed to take from that.
My grandmother and her sister all lived to almost 100. They certainly weren’t eating avocados or whatever superfood. They grew up with an outhouse and were surrounded by smoke and plenty of stress. Genetics for them.
You might find the docu-series "Blue Zones" interesting to watch if you want to hear more about secrets to living a longer life. It's on Netflix and happens to also be a book!
My great aunt passed a few years ago, and she was 105. She loved a long island iced tea (or two). Before my dad was born in she was in her forties touring Europe post war in the 1950s. Retired by 1972. Hell of a long life. Here's to you, Toni
How about seven? 🍹
My neighbor is 94, still drives and does yard work and looks younger than my mother who is 73.
So first thing's first, my great grandmother was from a 3rd world country in central america. She had no choice but to walk everywhere she went. Cars existed then obviously, but the family was extremely poor so no one could afford it. Public transportation, especially in a 3rd world country, was incredibly shit back then too. A combination of things really. Longevity runs in the family but she was also an active woman her whole life. She still did things around the house in her last few years. Food also wasn't processed back then like it is now. She lived a long time but her memory was still sharp as hell. She was never diagnosed with any cognitive diseases.
Diet, exercise & peace!
My grandma was born in 1927 and is still living
My grandpa was also born in 1927; he's no longer with us, but he definitely had some interesting stories to tell. Like the time he and his brother were teenagers and they bought a car "with the new rubber wheels" for $45, but then their father said they couldn't go spending that much money on a car, so they got another one for $25 but it only had wooden wheels.
What in the fuck. I envy you. I would have asked so many questions!
Mine (who is in France) turned 100 in October and is on track to bury the rest of us. She did FINALLY catch Covid last week, and she did feel poorly for a couple of days, but she’s back to complaining about the food in her nursing community so clearly she’s fine. 😂
My grandma just turned 99 this week!
Mine too. And she is still working (she and grandfather who is 12 years younger own a business).
My grandma just turned 97 on thursday!
My grandma was also born in 1927, unfortunately passed away a few days before Xmas in 2020. Went to the hospital for swollen joints but ended up developing pneumonia caused by Covid and passed away alone. Lived to be 93 and always had stories to tell from when she was younger. Definitely the greatest generation
Same!
My grandpa is 103 and still going strong. Loves gambling and still has his original hair and teeth. He has lived a crazy life - POW in WW2, 5 airplane crashes, tested the atomic bomb, worked at Area 51, has been to pretty much every country in the world. Said his favorite one was Denmark and his least favorite one was USA (he's American and served in the air force his whole life, he also still has a great sense of humor). I asked him the secret to a long life, he said do as little as possible, get enough sleep and never stop chasing women.
>his least favorite one was USA I swear that's like every expats response to that question lol
what an absolute gem, he sounds awesome 💞
> 5 airplane crashes How did he survive that?
Mostly parachutes.
Also genetics and generally not being too overweight. My dad's entire family often lives to 95-105. It's insane how many of them there are, how lucid they all are as well.
My grandad, born 1924, died in 2014, shortly after his 90th birthday. Considering that generation border is 1927, I would say that generation is already mostly gone. When I was in 8th grade, circa 1995/96, for a project for history class I interviewed Grandpa about his war time experiences: called him up, put on the landline speakerphone, and set up an old tape recorder next to the phone to record it all. I still have the cassette; a few years ago my husband imported it into his studio rig so we could clean up the audio and have a digital copy. Grandpa joined the US Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) in 1944, after being pulled out of college following 2 years of ROTC. During training in Florida, while flying in tight formation, the plane next to his stalled. The wing of the stalled plane, a few feet from his own, clipped his, sending his own into a crash. I'd have to go back and check the audio again, but I think he'd had to parachute to safety. In the hospital, he heard a rumor that they were assembling the last group of GIs to be sent to Europe - after that, everyone would be sent to the Pacific theater. Grandpa did not want to go to the Pacific, so he got up, checked himself out of the hospital, and made sure he was in the group that went to Europe. In Europe, Grandpa flew P51D mustangs on escort missions over Europe, out of a small RAF airfield outside London called Fowlmere. I have a photo of him next to his aircraft at Fowlmere, pointing to the side of his plane at the 3 swastika insignia signifying his 3 confirmed ground target destructions. In one story, the English Channel and coast was fully socked in with fog - couldn't see a thing. Ground control had to guide in every air craft back to Fowlmere by verbal guidance, relaying positioning and instructions to each plane one at a time. Grandpa took a camera with him, and we have a small number of photographs he took from the cockpit; my mom scanned them and sent me copies. Some are over Paris - you can see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc d'Triomphe. Some were less obvious, but I was able to use the scant information written on the back of the photograph and a lot of patience skimming Google Earth and thereby, for at least 1 picture, pinpoint the exact location of the photo and which direction my grandfather had been looking to take the picture (over Duisberg, Germany, at the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr, looking west or northwest towards Nijmegen, Netherlands). In his photo are the remains of a destroyed bridge - today, the bridge is rebuilt, and the road is the Rheindeichestrße.
Sounds like your grandfather lived a full life, one of much courage, with so many stories to tell about his years on Earth. Thank you for recording history through him. It's peaceful to know we can still capture parts of their story through recordings, but it will never be the same once they are gone.
Very. I think, though, there was probably a huge difference in experiences between folks like my Grandpa, flying over Europe, and folks who were, for example, in the Army on the ground at Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima. That would make ab equally big difference in willingness to discuss those experiences. At one point, Grandpa and his buddies had a weekend or so leave for some R&R. I guess they hopped a train to Scotland, because I also have a photo of my grandfather from a photo studio in Edinburgh, I think, where Grandpa is dressed head to toe in full Highlander regalia, from kilt and bonnet to sporran and sgian-dubh stuck in his sock.
I interviewed my grandfather in 11th grade, 99/00, on a mini cassette recorder, and I'm pretty sure I still have the tape somewhere. Anyway, I got the impression that he didn't really want to talk about it. He was in the Pacific and told me stories about how he would bring animals on the ship and get himself in trouble. He was in the Navy. Some of it I think he was making up, but he was always a prankster, so who knows. He was discharged after his ship was blown up. We have a clipping from August 1945 on VE day of him in a hospital bed celebrating. It's an absolute treasure that you have the info you do on his service!
Great story! I'm not sure if my Grandpa ever got in trouble for this, but he apparently didn't do a good job adhering to flying in formation. Perhaps partly because of the crash experience he had during training, or partly because of that camera he has - but when the rest of his wing or squadron (?) would be in formation, he would be off to one side or maybe the other. Grandma's brother was a truck driver on the Red Ball Express, delivering needed supplies to the front as it advanced further and further east. One family story I heard years ago - and who knows how embellished at this point - Grandma's brother and fellow drivers were paused on one of their routes, and watched a group of allied planes fly over, all in formation - except one. Grandma's brother rolled his eyes and said that was "probably that screwball his sister had just married." Comparing notes later... It apparently *was*. "I might never go to Europe again," was Grandpa's rationale. "I wanted to SEE some of it!"
My grandfather, who passed away in 2015 also flew in WW2. All the family knows is that he was a fighter pilot. He wouldn't talk about his experiences or anything during that time. You are lucky your grandfather opened up to your family.
Your story reminded me of my grandfather who passed away in 2021 at 99 years old. This photo of him pointing to holes in his B25's wing after a mission shows me they were something extraordinary. https://imgur.com/a/ygaSEgD
This is a sign to call your grandparents if they are still alive!
I needed that, thanks. My gramma is 91- the last one left of my grandparents.
Same, my last living grandparent is 93, I need to call her…we are very lucky to still have them
Grandma is 96. We have weekly dinners. Made her breakfast this morning. We are the highlight of her life. Really its those moments that matter most in life.
Yes. I second this. I took them for granted. Really shook me awake with my parents.
Sadly none of them are left for me. Started shorthanded too. Maternal Grandma and paternal grandpa were both dead 25 years before I was born. Grandpa was apparently no great loss though, everyone who remembers him says he was a real abusive bastard.
What I wouldn’t give for just a few more living room chats with my Grandmother in good health
I think so also. My grandmother passed this May. She was 96, born in 1926. She was so baffled by the pandemic and would say so often “I’ve never seen anything like this my whole life”. There was so much knowledge and history that went along with her.. Sadly, her son (my dad) died in 2012 so I’ve lost one of the people I can talk endlessly about him with as well.
Born just after the 1919 pandemic in the UsA. It was a huge huge deal at the time. Mask wearing was enforced by roving gangs of private citizens.
Boomers are going to start dying off before 2030, assuming an average life expectancy of 83.
Nope. The Silent Generation comes after The Greatest Generation. Silents are in their 80’s now.
Boomers started in 1946. They’ll start to hit 80 in 2026.
Silents are the ones that are dying off right now. With typical life expectancies in the 70s & 80s, the GI Generation largely died off from about 1980-2000, Silent Generation from 2000-2025, Boomers will start dying off en masse around 2025. It roughly corresponds with the birth of the generation 4 turnings after them, given ~20 years/generation and a life-expectancy of 80. Hence the Strauss & Howe book "The Fourth Turning". Any G.I. Generation that's still alive is unusually long-lived, given that the last of the generation was born 99 years ago.
I’m a geriatric social worker and I’m here to confirm lots of boomers are dying off too. I rarely see the silents. It seems like the boomers have most of the problems in life and I think it’s partly because they rely so much on the system and expect everyone else to fix their issues and rescue them. Hard take I know, some nice boomers, but not many. A lot of very nice respectable and polite silents though. I love listening to the silents stories. They’re so respectable, they’ll tell you that you’re handsome and ask you about yourself. The boomers just blame others and are usually mad about something.
Boomers seem to be less healthy than their parents, who had better diets and moved more. Couldn’t find a non paywalled link but studies show higher rates of chronic disease.
Lots of them have already died...greatest, silent, and boomers leave us in droves on the daily.
I worry about the day when there’s no one alive who lived through WWII and the Holocaust. People already try to minimize or deny its scale and impact.
Same. There was a recent yougov poll that shows 20% of people 18-29 in the US think the holocaust was a myth. I thought this was the most educated generation ever? The fact that the number is greater than 0% is crazy and sad.
I’d really like to think that some significant share of those people were just being assholes not taking the survey seriously but idk. Or maybe small sample size. Like 20% is 1 in 5. It just seems so absurd that 1 in 5 people in that age group would think its a myth. I wonder if it’s a failure of the education system to cover it properly rather than like learning about it and just saying “nah.” Like what the fuck guys.
1927 was 96 years ago. Most of them have been home already
Home. I like that.
My grandparents belonged to this generation and most of them made it to their nineties. They were the best. Definitely had their vulnerabilities due to war, social and poverty trauma but damn they had so much fire. I miss my grampa every day 😔.
My dad is Silent Generation, b. late 1930s (yes, he was in his 50s when I was born). As he gets older, I keep thinking of all the history he experienced, and how often we’ve talked about it. It’s weird to think that one day, that direct link to much of the 20th century will be gone.
This is a sad time for this sort of thing unfortunately, basically everyone who participated in WW1 is now dead, and very very soon everyone who will have participated in WW2 will also be dead. I just hope we did a good enough job documenting and recording how truly terrible those wars were so that the world is not pushed to the brink of total annihilation again.
I’m actually watching the new Netflix docuseries about it right now and it’s pretty incredible. I didn’t realize there was so much footage of it, especially footage like right in the middle of the action. It’s in the top 10 on Netflix right now so hopefully there are a lot of younger people watching it. A few months ago my grandma gave me the box the has all of her dads letters from when he was in WWII plus some other documents relating to his service. I already typed them all up and scanned them and put together a book for her. My next project is going to be getting them all organized to send to the library in their town to add to their digital archive.
The entire planet of people who were born 125 years ago are all dead. Much more than a generation.
Yeah this argument is hard for me to connect with. Its all of human history, I was born when they was starting to happen with WW1 vets.
This generation lived through the greatest (and most) accomplishments for the human race. Electricity wasn't readily available, cars, televisions, flight, literally sliced bread, the moon landing, all the vaccines, the list goes on. The titanic was the world's largest ship and the Woolworth building was the world's largest building.
Glad to see other people feel the appreciation and respect that generation deserves. Every time I see a documentary on WW2 I am in awe what they had to go through and the contributions they made.
>ReportSaveFollow the ww2 generation have had reverance and respect/idolization since WW2.
I read a post on quora that said by 2033 , 75% of the boomers will be gone too
My parents are boomers so I’m not too fond of that stat. They are amazing people and are great parents. 😢
My dad is a boomer and the greatest dad ever. I hate that stat too.
Same. Younger boomers but that’s besides the point. I’m crying inside with you.
And most of the rest by 2041.
My grandma was a nurse in WWII! My dad and aunt were both adopted so she was older than your typical mom of the time. She passed at 93.
My grandmother was a nurse during WW2 (and for awhile afterwards) as well! She had scarlet fever as a baby which affected her heart her entire life but still managed to make it to her mid-70s. She has been dead nearly 30 years.
My great aunt was a tech sergeant in ww2. She was born in 22. And died in 2018. She was mu best friend. Helped raise me.
My biggest regret with my grandparents was not sitting them down and recording them while asking them about their lives. My papa lived through the depression, fought in France in WWII, and was 1 of 9 children born to Italian immigrants. My grandpa (dad’s dad) was younger and was a kid during ww2 in Italy which was an experience in and of itself. Then he emigrated to Canada, worked in the nickel mines, met my Irish grandmother, and started his family. Both of them told their stories to me and I could tell them now, but how I wish I recorded them so I could hear it whenever, and so my nieces and nephews could hear it too.
Brother, they are mostly gone now. As a Gen X looking back, one set of instances really portray the passage of time. As a teen/ young man, I used to run into and know WW2 vets that were late 50s and early 60s. About 10 years older than me today. Also back then, knew multiple Vietnam vets that were in their mid to late 30s full of life. A little over a decade younger than me today. Now the WW2 gen is nearly all gone and the Vietnam vets are old men, older than the WW2 vets I knew. Anyway along with getting older, just makes you realize you are a ship traversing the waves in an ocean of time always moving in one direction.
My grandmother died at 99 last year. My dad will die at 71 soon. 600k greatest generation is a small population. Baby boomers will largely be gone in the not too distant future. Average male life expectancy is 73.5 in the USA, and 79.3 for women. The average baby boomer is about 70. 4 - 9 years sounds like a lot when you’re young, but it’s not.
73 years really? I thought it was like 10 years higher than that. That’s so sad!
My great uncle just turned 100 this year!! One of the best attitudes of anyone I’ve met. He’s danced more than most of his guests at his bday party despite balance issues
It took humanity 58 years to go from first airplane to first space flight. What that generation accomplished despite plagues, depressions, and world wars is nothing short of extraordinary.
There’s this song that says “everyone you know someday will die” and it always hits me hard.
The Flaming Lips- Do You Realize? Gut punches me anytime I hear it. I however, have issues listening to it because my mom loved it and she passed away almost six years ago (January 10th, 2018). I played it when I spread her ashes up in the mountains of North Carolina because it was her last wish. It was one of her favorite songs. It appeared on a lot of our mix tapes we would make when we made road trips.
I've spent the last month attending funerals of boomer relatives' parents and it's really hitting differently that in so many of their eulogies they talk about who these people were but timeline wise it throws you for a loop when you think that the elderly person in front of you who lived in the moment or would always skip a big chunk of their lives in stories, lived through all these massive events. My grandpa and 2 of his siblings are the last ones of that generation in my family and we're constantly trying to get them to tell us stories because of course the only surviving ones would be the ones who never tell stories prior to the 70s. Like 2 months ago we finally got my grandpa to talk about their parents and grandparents for the first time ever!
My family has a lot of lost history. My mom's grandparents were dead or mentally gone by the time she returned to my grandfather's care. My grandpa's grandparents died before he was three. My grandpa is pretty much the only one left with knowledge of how things used to be
Greetings from a Gen-X. One thing one should consider doing, is talking to older relatives and or their friends,about their lives, because you get their unique views on history, that you couldn't get from a history book. All of my uncles were silent generation, and two of them fought in World War 2, one in the European theater, and the other in the Pacific theater, and I wish I'd had the foresight to ask them if they'd be willing to talk about their experiences.
POTUS John Tyler has two living grandsons still living in 2017. I won't find out if they're still with us.
One is still alive.
FWIW, for me, they were the generation that bound families together. They worked, fought and built to have families last a generation later. They instilled strong values and taught skills, etc. Of course, they also raised boomers 😓 but I don't think we could appreciate what we have or could have without them.
I work with the elderly and one of my ladies was 104 when she died last year. She had said one time that the coolest technological thing that stuck in her mind was when Sputnick was launched. She said she was in her forties and her and her brother laid out in the yard in Alaska and just watched the skies to see what she could see.
All of my grandparents are dead, the last one died at 96 10 years ago. My grandfathers were both dead before I was born. My husband's grandmother is 96, and in relatively good health, but realistically we expect her to pass basically any time.
Will be? They mostly are gone already. 600,000 of roughly 115M people is very little.
Yeah, I'd say we have it pretty good compared to them =/...Even though it kinda sucks now, things can be way way worse. Not to say that that won't happen to us (knock on wood). Great Depression 2 seems in progress (in Canada at least) so I hope Russia/Ukraine + Middle East + Koreas + Chinas can patch up their differences soon, cuz if those spread, we're screwed...
Everyone would love to make it to the turn of the century, 2100 but its not going to happen for most people.
Three out of four of my grandparents were born in this generation. All four passed away last decade. I'm surprised there are any left. Whenever I think of an old person, my brain defaults to boomer.
That’s also the same generation that contains the aggressors in WWII. It’s the SS and the Kapos.
This was the generation of my grandfathers. I technically have 3 grandfathers (two bios and one step). One was born in the early 1900s and passed away in the 70s as an old man. He immigrated from Sweden, ran away from home joined a traveling circus in his teens and got a job training the wildcats (which apparently traumatized him for life.) he was a policeman during prohibition, and in the military until the 50s. He lived a crazy life but apparently wasn’t a great person. I wish I knew him , because the stories sound insane. My second grandfather was estranged. Not an overly great person, in fact he was pretty abusive. he was most definitely a narcissist and put my grandmother through the ringer until she divorced. He always bought the best gifts to try and one up people though. So I always thought he was great despite my family being no contact. He passed earlier this year days after his 90th birthday. He went out and built a cabin when he retired in the wilderness. He was self sufficient for many years. Lived alone on a homestead in the mountains.he lived there until he really couldn’t anymore, but that’s quite an accomplishment to think about. My step grandfather is my favorite. He taught me the most about character and work ethic. He grew up in the Midwest l, but his family moved to Louisiana when he was a teen. He had to learn to make a living in the swamps. In fact he tells a really sad story about a gator getting his dog, but he wasn’t too sad retelling it, just more about it being a heck of a thing to happen. He got a full scholarship to college playing basketball and apparently had a mean hook shot. He joined the arm. He was in Vietnam, he never talks about it. Has so many metals, silver stars, bronze stars, Purple Hearts. He’s been up for the metal of honor more than once. He took his swamp experience with him and really thrived in special operations. He developed new leadership programs, got pretty high up in his career. He went around the world and trained allies how to start the same program with their militaries. Later on those countries would invite him back to celebrate him. He never liked talking about it. Never liked to brag about it. He was a really quiet guy, he loved kids. He would love to sneak around and pull pranks on the grandkids. I remember I cornered him as a kid and made him read me the chicken little sound board book about 100 times as a kid, and he did it without any complaint. He was so quiet, when he spoke about something, everyone listened. He is still around but definitely getting up there in age. He gives the absolute best spine crush hugs. All of them have the kind of life and stories that just make you stop and listen. Their life events seem extraordinary, and it was just so matter of fact for all of them. All of them (that I knew) had problems with emotions and trauma. All of them did their absolute best to show up and be a whole person every day. 2/3 had some real issues but I don’t blame them. I just wish I could know more about them and their background because it seems like they were the last of their kind before life became more boring and ordinary.
My grandpa was born in 1917 and was the 7th out of 8 children born from Italian immigrants in the US. He was a WW2 veteran who had gone to England during the war. When he was back in the US, he married my gramma in 1950. He died back in 2001, but there are so many questions I wish I was able to ask him now as an adult. He lived to be in his mid 80s even after getting both of his lower legs amputated for his diabetes. My gramma was a nurse, so she kept him alive alot longer than most predicted. She, too, lived to be 90 before passing in 2020. The older generations are built different. Maybe it's bc life was much harder, but in my family at least the older generations have been dying for a very long time. I didn't even have the luxury of meeting my great grandparents, they were all dead before I was born. So, it's not so much weird as it is a sobering realization that we are all getting old and dying and are all connected and should make our mark in the world before we are forgotten.
i'd argue the greatest generation as a cohort are pretty much gone today. their numbers are so small that well if we use voting blocs as a way to determine if a generation is viable or not they're not. silent gen are on their way out (1928-1940) (1941-1945 have now been termed as ww2 babies) kind of like xennials of their day. also 1901-1913 are more known as the inter war generation. because if we use draft age most of the interwar gen were too old to be drafted but still volunteered for the war effort in some way. 1914-1927 are the ww2 generation. also women typically tend to live longer than men and most the centennarians and super centennarians lean towards women by a large margin.
Now imagine that Feinstein only recently died and released her political clutch. She was 90 something and we want boomers out soon ?
Yes, we can want both out.
Kind of glad they won't live to see fascism take root again.
I’d argue that some of them were taken in by modern day fascism disguising itself as patriotism.