I’m continually amazed by my grandparents’ generation, born in the 1880s and 1890s …
– before airplanes and cars, radios and TVs, and before most of the country ever saw electric lights or a telephone
– when the US was still fighting Indian Wars, cowboying and the open range were still a dominant way of life in the West, and the US was still settling its frontier
– long before antibiotics or x-rays, when a simple sore throat could kill your child in a matter of days
– before women could vote or the United States carried much weight in the broader world
They fought in the trenches of World War I, endured the Great Depression, provided the leadership and brains to win WWII, and they guided the great American post-war growth boom.
In their old age, they watched color TV and men on the moon, flew in transcontinental jets, and they had the grace, love and humor to leave me some of my most enduring and cherished memories.
