Aunt Jean’s Corner: The greatest generation was not so great.

by 93 yrs young Jean Marie (Fry) Copeland, “Aunt Jean” as affectionately known by most, including me.

The greatest generation wasn’t so great. We were made of ordinary people who were just trying to survive like everyone else.

The children came from farms, small towns, cities. They would get up and work in the mornings before the sun came up. The harvesting of wheat and corn, fruits and the vegetables, meat from the barn. working from sunrise to sunset. The children from the towns worked at the grocery stores, newspapers, wherever they could find work because they were raised during the depression where there was no food.

Few people owned property so they had to rent houses form other people and they had to have work to do that. The children often gave money to their parents to help pay for food, for rent, or whatever was needed. They learned to improvise, make do with the things they had, put the tractor together with wire hangers, fix the motor with whatever was available, and it was a hard life.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the nation came together and everybody went to work. They had to build engines for airplanes, automobiles, trucks, tanks, guns. They found the best scientists in the world they could persuade to come to this country to invent or enhance weapons to help win the war. But these were ordinary people just like you and me.

When the war was won by the allies and thus we all went back to work. We didn’t all go back to work because there was a job shortage after the war because all of these military people are coming back and their farms have been sold, things have changed at home. So there was a lot of unemployment. We were able to conquer that problem eventually. And before the end of the century, there seemed to be ample jobs for people. 

It seemed that the wars continue to come even though WWII had stopped. We had to Korean, Vietnamese war, and the wars with the Middle East. And then the greatest generation got old. 

“Don’t talk Politics or Religion”

Despite the heroism and the extraordinary… the men and women of the Greatest Generation failed their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren by not wanting to be involved in religion, politics, or anything that would disturb their peace and quiet. If you’re going to maintain freedom of any sorts, you need to fight for it, but you need to believe in it too. 

The present generation thinks we should change our ways of living by adopting a form of government that destroys incentive, gives power to one section of the government so that we have no freedom to make a judgement, or to give our ideas to the public. 

They want to destroy books, history, loyalty. These are the grandchildren, children, great grandchildren of the ordinary people of the greatest generation. 

Fighting can be done in non combative ways but you at least need to be able to voice your opinions and look at all sides of the problem. 

Freedom gives you that opportunity to do the research and present the information. Socialism denies you the ability. 

This is my observation, 93 years on this earth… now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

God bless our nation.