The Greatest Generation Is Leaving Us – The American Spectator

This past April, I found myself lamenting the continued loss of America’s greatest generation, heartbroken by the news of the passing of Ken Potts, one of the two remaining Pearl Harbor survivors serving aboard the USS Arizona on that fateful day of Dec. 7, 1941. I could not help but wonder if heroes like Ken Potts and his compatriots left this world feeling optimistic about our nation’s future. When I look around at the ever-fraying fabric of our society, I fear that we, the later generations, have not kept up our end of the bargain.

With each passing generation, it feels as though everything that once made our society strong, worthwhile, and aspirational fades away more and more by the day. We, as Americans, have always been rugged individualists, valuing our personal freedoms. Yet within that framework, we had the unspoken but innate belief that it was our sacred responsibility to treat one another in an honorable and decent way. We once believed that it was our intrinsic duty as countrymen to make life a bit easier for one another, whether it was a trusted neighbor, a schoolteacher, a police officer, or even the shopkeeper down the street. Through the heart of our nation ran a binding thread of belief in our need for one another — your success was my success, and that led to our nation’s success. Yet somewhere along the way we slipped loose of that thread. Since then, the fabric of our nation has slowly begun to unravel.

From my view, the problem is twofold: Life has simply become far too easy for all of us, and we’ve fallen prey to the social decline inevitable when an increasingly self-absorbed populace is more interested in victimhood and virtue signaling than the timeless virtues of honor, stoicism, and grit. The “Greatest Generation,” conversely, over the course of about four decades, worked to enshrine our nation’s values and build the entire societal infrastructure upon which we stand today.

How did one generation do so much to both build and bind our nation? Why does it often feel as though we, the latter generations, are just spinning our wheels?

The Greatest Generation Built This Nation

First, it’s important to understand the cultural, economic, and political challenges the people who make up the World War II generation faced over the course of their lives. Members of the “Greatest Generation” — a moniker coined by news icon and author Tom Brokaw to highlight the immense contribution of this hallowed group of Americans born between 1901 and 1927 — managed to hold their families together in wake of the catastrophic stock market crash of 1929 and through the subsequent Great Depression, only to face the scorched earth of the American Dust Bowl, which they endured from 1930 to 1936.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Europe was set ablaze, the men of the Greatest Generation went off to fight World War II. American women kept the nation afloat by signing up to serve in the military’s nurse corps and seamlessly took over their husbands’ roles in shipyards and factories throughout the nation. On the warfront, American troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, liberated the concentration camps, raised the flag on Iwo Jima, and ultimately won the war on both fronts by 1945.

When the soldiers finally returned home from the warfront, they immediately went back to work in factories, assembling automobiles, building bridges, and creating the interstate highway system. Beyond erecting the massive skyscrapers of our great cities, they also expanded the range of essential services, creating what we now call the suburbs. The ingenuity, work ethic, and dedication of these men and women created one of the most successful economic and infrastructure expansions in the history of the modern world.

Crucially, the work of this generation was not merely relegated to building the physical foundation upon which we stand today. The Greatest Generation, under the Marshall Plan, helped to rebuild Europe, then worked to enshrine the values of equal justice under law for all Americans at home. In fact, it was members from this generation who fought to dismantle the scourge of segregation in the southern United States and usher in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

We owe so much of the modern-day first-world ease of our lives today to the toil and sacrifice of the Greatest Generation. How was it possible for one single generation to do so much for so many future generations?

The Greatest Generation Left Us the Blueprint

Perhaps the biggest secret to the Greatest Generation’s prolific success is that of utmost importance to them were two things: servant leadership and the Golden Rule. For me, this was exemplified in a single encounter I had about 25 years ago when I was a young Navy sailor in Washington, D.C.

At the time, I was working as special assistant to the master chief petty officer of the Navy, the highest-ranking enlisted man in the Navy. I was sent to Bethesda National Naval Medical Center for an errand, and I found myself sitting in the waiting room next to a kind and well-dressed older gentleman. It was summer, and I was wearing my “Navy whites,” which, as any former sailor can tell you, are notorious stain magnets.

After about five minutes, the older gentleman leaned over to me and said, “You’re looking mighty sharp, young man — I know what a pain in the a** those whites are!” We both laughed, and we ended up speaking for about 20 minutes before someone came out and called the gentleman in for his appointment.

As he was gathering his things, he reached up to the lapel of his blazer, removed his flag pin, and gestured for my hand, placing the pin into my outstretched palm. He asked, “You see what that says, above the flag?” I examined the words on the pin, which read, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” We had spent 20 minutes talking, and he never mentioned it — and I hadn’t noticed the pin.

I’ll never forget what he said next: “I was there that day. It was hell, but some of us made it, and I know we’re in good hands with you young guys. Make our country proud, son.”

I still choke up thinking about that moment. And I still have that pin. Given the seemingly omnipresent cynicism in our society these days, it’s almost hard to believe that such men actually existed in the world.

But that story illustrates what that generation did that we no longer do; in the actions and words of the man I met that day rests the very heart of how you build up and pass along a new society for a new generation. The members of the Greatest Generation didn’t care about the newest, hottest thing — they believed in personal honor and were devoted to inspiring others, one on one, rather than just climbing the ladder. They seemed to innately recognize the immense importance of passing down the core values that have served to make our nation this world’s beacon of liberty and justice. These men knew that hard work, sacrifice, and perseverance were the cornerstones to success. And when they achieved that success, the first thing they sought to do was build a foundation for the next generation of Americans to expand upon — to secure the future of the country they loved.

The members of the Greatest Generation have left us the blueprint. If our society is ever going to truly get back on the right track, we are all going to have to do much less obsessing over ourselves and spend much more time empowering and sustaining our fellow man in a truly meaningful way. In the words of an ancient Greek proverb, “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” For my part, I’ll always remember the hero who passed on the sacred values of his generation to me.

The torch of that hallowed generation is now in our hands. For the sake of our nation’s future, I pray that we strive to be worthy of the consecrated gift that they have bestowed upon us.

Nate Terani is a military veteran, having served as a member of the elite U.S. Navy Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, D.C., and in HUMINT intelligence operations with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nate’s writing has been published by the Huffington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Nation, TomDispatch, and many others.