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Adults in their 70s and 80s changed the face of America
By Rita Baum
They returned home from World War II victorious and brave, yet stunned, humbled and grateful to be alive. These Americans, now in their 70s, 80s, and older make up the generation of people who have possessed, throughout their lives, a magnificent spirit and energy. However, this generation has been largely overshadowed by its baby-boomer children, a generation that has been influential mainly by virtue of its size. The baby boomers inherited a stable world that was largely the result of their parents' hard work and foresight. In this final year of the century, the media has focused on people and events that have made a mark in the 20th century. Older Americans deserve to share the spotlight.
The year 1999 has been proclaimed the International Year of the Older Person. May is Older Americans Month, a good time to pay tribute to our older Americans who belong to the generation that fought in World War II. They paved the way in housing and other life needs for future young, as well as older Americans. They had the experience of the Great Depression as their childhood teacher. In their youth and early adulthood they defended our country and won World War II, or stayed behind to work in the shipyards or support the war effort in other ways.
After the war, they set out on a course that would change and shape American life and its economy for the next 50 years and beyond. They started trends that would catch on and they launched a new standard of living for future average Americans.
Today's elders were the first generation of average-income Americans to get a college education, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, and from that time forward, education ceased to be a privilege of the elite. After the war many GIs finished high school, or got their GED so they could go to college. Data collected in the United States 1990 census showed that for the first time, at least 50 percent of people over 65 had completed high school. Prior census data reported that 50 percent had completed only eighth grade.
For decades after the war, entrepreneurs and market leaders scrambled to keep one step ahead of this generation, producing the goods and services they needed to live their lives and rear their baby-boomer children, which they produced in unprecedented numbers. The children born of this generation were caught up in, latched on to, and loved being a part of the winds of a changing world, created by their parents.
Their young parents started a housing boom, again aided by the GI Bill of Rights, which produced tract housing and the family room. Home ownership, like higher education, became a possibility for every American for the first time. Builders who weren't constructing houses were building schools for their children.
This generation that fought in WWII created markets for diaper services, backyard swings, cameras and other products, and later, when their children entered the teenage years, new markets for rock and roll music and fashions for the parents to buy. America was into an era of unbridled prosperity. Later, some watched their children become hippies, their daughters and granddaughters become working moms, and they survived their children's mid-life crises. They look back with pride in the fact that they were wise, stable parents.
Was it the war experience that made this generation of Americans unique? Many GIs as young as 18 left the country or their small towns for the first time, fighting a war on a global scale on the ground, sea and air, with operations in Europe, North Africa, the Near and Far East. They were exposed to new places and cultures. As elders they would return to those far-off places, starting a trend in retirement travel.
After the war, they returned home with the knowledge of death, concentration camps, the atomic bomb and man's inhumanity to man still fresh in their minds and spirit. Yet they were eager to resume a normal life and to use their newly gained vigor and courage to blaze new trails that would bring them peace, stability and prosperity. They chose as their president Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, WW II Supreme Commander of the European Theater of Operations, who in 1943 organized the allied invasion of Europe, which enabled many to envision an end to the war and to return home. Eisenhower served the country from 1953 to 1961. One of his final acts before completing his term of office in 1961, was to call for the first White House Conference on Aging, which led in 1965 to the creation of the Older Americans Act and Medicare. The generation that served with Eisenhower could look forward to old age with dignity and security.
Today they continue to influence the economy, demanding products to meet their needs and those of future older Americans. And their needs are varied. Older Americans are a diverse group and there is not one size or style that fits all.
The 1960s television show Star Trek, created by the children of this generation, explored many new ideas. One of the show's most popular characters, Mr. Spock, was a half-human/half-Vulcan being. The Vulcans had a common, universal greeting. Upon meeting or departing, Vulcans raised a hand with their fingers in a "V" and spoke the phrase: "Live long and prosper." That simple phrase, now a cultural icon of sorts, aptly applies to the parents of the generation that created and watched that popular show, almost as if the baby-boomer generation was sending a sentiment to their parents, and to all who come after them. The generation that's now in its 70s and 80s helped Americans define prosperity and long life, setting a standard that is held high by all who follow in their trailblazing footsteps.
Rita Baum has a master's degree in gerontology. She resides in Los Gatos.
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Campbell, California
