I have always detested the phrase, "the greatest generation," especially as it was applied to Tom Brokaw's hagiography of white World War II veterans in a book bearing that name.
My daddy was also a World War II veteran. He was the greatest to me, and he was surely not white. To the contrary, his memories of his Negro Army days are bitter ones, like riding in Jim Crow cars, in Texas, while German and Italian prisoners of war rode in first class. Yet, he and all the Negro veterans on our block in Rock Hill, Missouri, in the 1960s, faithfully and patriotically, flew the "Stars and Stripes" every holiday without fail.
His hero was his father, a black farmer in Mississippi who raised nine children on his owned-land, and who lived so frugally, that daddy would recall their fine hams being sold in town at market, but not eaten at home. Instead, they ate the "lights", Daddy said, whatever that was.
To daddy, his father was of the greatest generation just to be able to survive, even to thrive, in pre-World War II Mississippi ! Doubtless, my grandfather felt the same way about those ancestors, direct descendants of slaves, who engendered and raised him and his siblings in the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era, now generally known as the "nadir" of our African American history.
The point is this. The "greatest" are they that produced you, raised you, and brought you to adulthood intact!
Monday, March 16, 2015
THE GREATEST
THE GREATEST!
I have always detested the phrase, "the greatest generation," especially as it was applied to Tom Brokaw's hagiography of white World War II veterans in a book bearing that name.
My daddy was also a World War II veteran. He was the greatest to me, and he was surely not white. To the contrary, his memories of his Negro Army days are bitter ones, like riding in Jim Crow cars, in Texas, while German and Italian prisoners of war rode in first class. Yet, he and all the Negro veterans on our block in Rock Hill, Missouri, in the 1960s, faithfully and patriotically, flew the "Stars and Stripes" every holiday without fail.
His hero was his father, a black farmer in Mississippi who raised nine children on his owned-land, and who lived so frugally, that daddy would recall their fine hams being sold in town at market, but not eaten at home. Instead, they ate the "lights", Daddy said, whatever that was.
To daddy, his father was of the greatest generation just to be able to survive, even to thrive, in pre-World War II Mississippi ! Doubtless, my grandfather felt the same way about those ancestors, direct descendants of slaves, who engendered and raised him and his siblings in the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era, now generally known as the "nadir" of our African American history.
The point is this. The "greatest" are they that produced you, raised you, and brought you to adulthood intact!
I have always detested the phrase, "the greatest generation," especially as it was applied to Tom Brokaw's hagiography of white World War II veterans in a book bearing that name.
My daddy was also a World War II veteran. He was the greatest to me, and he was surely not white. To the contrary, his memories of his Negro Army days are bitter ones, like riding in Jim Crow cars, in Texas, while German and Italian prisoners of war rode in first class. Yet, he and all the Negro veterans on our block in Rock Hill, Missouri, in the 1960s, faithfully and patriotically, flew the "Stars and Stripes" every holiday without fail.
His hero was his father, a black farmer in Mississippi who raised nine children on his owned-land, and who lived so frugally, that daddy would recall their fine hams being sold in town at market, but not eaten at home. Instead, they ate the "lights", Daddy said, whatever that was.
To daddy, his father was of the greatest generation just to be able to survive, even to thrive, in pre-World War II Mississippi ! Doubtless, my grandfather felt the same way about those ancestors, direct descendants of slaves, who engendered and raised him and his siblings in the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era, now generally known as the "nadir" of our African American history.
The point is this. The "greatest" are they that produced you, raised you, and brought you to adulthood intact!