We Lucky Few

Our street, 1940

I'd been thinking of writing about this subject for some time.  But when I recently found myself watching a special on Peter, Paul and Mary's 50th Anniversary, I asked myself, how is it that my generation has been called The Silent Generation?  We who were born between the 1929 crash and the end of World War Two.  Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom.  During all of the '30s and half of the '40s.  And all of us, well before television came in.

Silent, indeed!  Were Peter, Paul, and Mary silent?   Martin Luther King?  Gloria Steinem?  The Chicago 7, the Freedom Riders, the anti-war protestors?  And in more recent years, Bill Moyers?

I take it we were called The Silent Generation because we didn't make a fuss, at least early on. But I also take it that looking out onto the world we were born into--the Depression, War, Holocaust--we may have asked what we'd gotten ourselves into.  In Europe, certainly, we children would have all experienced war or else been sent off to a foster home in some foreign country.  Maybe we were called Silent because, after all of that, everyone needed some time in which to catch their breath.

But then after a bit of sleuthing, I found another name for us in a book called The Lucky Few by a demographer, Elwood Carlson.  We were "few" because there weren't that many of us due to those hard times we were born into.  We were the first generation smaller than the one before or after.

And we were "lucky" because, according to Carlson, we were/are the healthiest, best educated, and wealthiest generation.  That was because our place in history enabled us to generally serve during peacetime, to find jobs without great difficulty, and to experience what he called "the last, and perhaps fullest, exemplar of the traditional family" (p. xix).  We were also able "to take advantage of the longest economic boom in the nation's history" (p. 23).  Even in old age, in our retirement, he says we're not doing too badly.

From my perspective, I think we started out as idealists.  I do believe we still thought that our government had everyone's best interests at heart.  We also felt that we were the ones Kennedy was talking to in his 1960 inaugural address. Certainly, we were the first to go out into the world as Peace Corps volunteers.  To walk on the moon.  And as Peter Yarrow pointed out in that already-mentioned special, we wanted to join together to bring about the greater good.  Though the times, they were a-changin', it was a philosophy which highlighted our early years.

In no particular order, here are a few of the Lucky Few/Silent Generation:  Edward Kennedy, Calvin Klein, Bob Dylan, Garrison Keillor, Joan Baez, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Elvis Presley, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Neil Armstrong, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Sean Connery, Dan Rather, Joseph Biden, Sandra Day O'Conner, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Maximilian Schell, Ted Turner, Colin Powell, Jesse Jackson, Russell Means, Warren Buffet, John Updike, Susan Sontag, Ralph Nadar, Shirley MacLaine, Zubin Mehta, Carl Sagan, Woody Allen.

For anyone wanting to read more, click here   (This link shifts the dates a bit--from 1925-1942.)


Next week's posting will be about growing up without TV.  (Stay tuned!)




(A reminder:  all photos in all postings of this blog are copyrighted and should not be reproduced without my permission.)