Individual views on our national divisions depend on our values and experiences, including our age and generation to which we belong. While not all of a given generation have similar views, they all share some common history.

We hear a lot about “The Greatest Generation,” those born from 1910-1924, having spent their formative and teen years during the Great Depression, and reaching military age just in time to fight WWII. We also hear a lot about the huge Baby Boom Generation, those born from 1946-1964, the result of returning GIs, family formation, and dramatic economic expansion following WWII, the period that solidified the U.S. as a dominant world power. Baby Boomers born and raised during economic prosperity changed the nation in major ways.

Seldom mentioned is that small generation, born from 1925-1945, between The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom Generation. This generation has been labeled “The Silent Generation.” That’s an appropriate label for two reasons: There were never very many of us, and we were the last generation to follow “the old rules.” We never revolutionized anything.

Although largely ignored in discourse regarding generations, and not having the advantages of later generations, this relatively small generation was in some ways the most fortunate of generations.

Most of this small generation was either born during the Great Depression, a period of economic hardship, or during WWII, not a period conducive to family formation. As babies and toddlers, we couldn’t know we were in economic depression. What more than caring parents and enough to eat do babies and toddlers need? And thanks to protection afforded by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, in contrast to kids in Europe and Asia, we were spared the horrors of enemy bombing during WWII. Ironically, even with shortages and rationing, American civilians lived better during WWII than during the Great Depression. (In later life, studying college level economics, I would learn that this was Keynesian economics on steroids.)

Although living on a farm in a rural school district, we lived close to town and I attended grade school in Monroe. Our classrooms were uncrowded. We didn’t have Little League Baseball in those days, nor the coaching, uniforms, and supervising parents that go with it. We organized our own games with the other grade schools, and got a kid from a different school to do the umping. One game was called early because the ump had to go home for supper. Helicopter mothers hovering over their children all the way through college had not yet been invented.  

As WWII ended, many feared the nation would go back to economic depression. In contrast, due to lack of spending power during the Depression and shortages during the war, there was a pent up demand for everything, augmented by returning GIs and new family formation. Due to forced savings during WWII, and benefits for returning GIs, there was spending power to make that demand effective. Factories retooled for peacetime production. Farmers purchased machinery, remodeled their houses, even getting the luxury of indoor plumbing just like city folks, a really big deal during that era of rising economic prosperity.

But schools remained little changed. Farm kids brought sack lunches to school and city kids walked or rode their bikes home for lunch. Vending machines in schools? Who would have even thought of such a preposterous notion? Athletic opportunities for girls were limited to cheerleading, and for boys, limited to football, basketball, and track. Counselors, and special education for slower learners, were non-existent. That would all change as the huge generation of Baby Boomers reached school age, requiring expansion of public school systems.

But for the small Silent Generation, classrooms remained unchanged and uncrowded. Of course, all doors remained unlocked. Who could have imagined an American, brandishing a weapon designed for maximum killing efficiency, entering a classroom and start blazing away.

June 1950, on a Sunday morning, a tough North Korean army with officers and NCOs seasoned by experience in the Chinese Red Army, rolled over the inept South Korean Army and rapidly pushed south. After being hammered by Republicans for “having lost China” in 1949, President Truman was not going to “lose Korea.” With the backing of the United Nations, the oldest of the Silent Generation, “The Forgotten Generation,” was tapped to fight “The Forgotten War.” 

The rest of this Silent Generation was spared, although Truman was not. While successfully keeping South Korea out of Communist hands, it was an unpopular war, with Truman even more unpopular for sacking General MacArthur who wanted to expand the war to Red China. WWII European Theater Commander, Dwight Eisenhower, was elected in 1952 with the promise to get us out of Korea. The cease fire was engineered in 1953. 

May 1954, days before my MHS graduation, the French got kicked out of Vietnam. Eisenhower declined massive military intervention, finessing the issue by sending “advisors” to the Army of South Vietnam. 

But the Cold War with the Soviet Union was still on, as was the military draft.  It was the relatively few born during the 1930s that were of military age during the post-Korean Cold War period. Having been kids during WWII and teens during the Korean War, it just seemed natural that military service was expected of able-bodied males. We didn’t question that “You owe two years to your country.” 

With escalation of American combat in Vietnam in 1964, the Silent Generation had already completed compulsory military service. The Baby Boomers would be on the hook — but not all of them. That generation was so huge that not all of them were needed, even with a hot war going on. Lower and middle class males saw combat even as the more privileged received college deferments and/or medical diagnoses such as heel spurs.

The military draft would end, and, with it, loss of common ground experienced by earlier generations. 

We of the small Silent Generation lacked the many opportunities and advantages of later generations. But our greater advantages included learning how to organize ourselves, traditional uncrowded class rooms free from fear and distractions, hitting military age between wars, and hitting the job market with fortunate timing with a lifetime of expectations and realization of prosperity in an expanding economy.      

— John Waelti’s column is published monthly in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.