LETTERS: Thanks to 'greatest generation'
To the Editor:
I read with interest your columns over the past year or two as you describe your experiences in World War II. Your words about your trip to your unit reunion back East, including your comments about the rapidly disappearing WWII generation inspired some thoughts.
It's human nature often to be late in remembering the contributions of people as they have touched our lives. It is not often when a society of any time forgets to say thanks to a whole generation until it is almost too late. My generation and those who follow us find ourselves in such a place.
Books, TV specials, monuments in our nation's capital, come too late for many of the WWII generation who laid the foundation for much which we have enjoyed in these past 50 years.
Our security, our prosperity, the unparalleled growth of our comforts would not be had if it had not been for the sacrifices of those who lived and died through the time of 1940-45. I live as a much younger sibling of several brothers who served in the armed services during those years.
Brother Bing Hayen stills lives a pretty active life these days after his service in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot. I've tried to get him to reminisce about those days with little luck. He's just lately opened the old trunk he keeps with all his "stuff" from those days. He won't say much about it. I do know he has used the Internet to search out some of his outfit and his crew who flew out of Great Britain in those days of the '40s. I hope he writes down some of his memories. Doubt he will, knowing the old curmudgeon!
I want to say to the OE and Bing and all of the others of you who still draw breath and take on nourishment who were there and lived to tell your stories, that you leave behind some of us who do remember, and will remember as long as we last. The contributions of your generation will not disappear as your lives in this place are finished.
I have faith as the historians tell your stories in the decades ahead, it will keep alive the wonder of your contributions for the future thinkers who live in that time ahead on this old globe.
Unfortunately, that is no guarantee future generations won't have to make the same sacrifices in the face of the threat of some despot or other. That is just the way of this human condition as I see it.
From one who wasn't there — thanks.
Jan Hayen
Parsons
