I Was Thinking... July 22, 1939

By the time this column makes the paper, 2/3 of our summer will be over. As I was lamenting the quick passage of July, I realized that today would have been my parents 85th wedding anniversary. They were married in the Norwegian Lutheran Church in Peshtigo, Wis. in 1939. My mom was 23 and dad wasn’t yet 21. They had 63 years together before dad died in 2002.
Some years ago, after genealogy research and an ample amount of procrastination, I finished writing several small books about my family’s history. I was fortunate enough to inherit many family pictures and over the years accumulated stories of our family from several relatives.
But with almost all who start preparing their genealogy background, I never started asking questions soon enough. Luckily my father was interested in his family history and provided some information and had also begun writing his own autobiography. This provided information I could never have found with research.
What truly amazed me as I dug into our family’s past, was the number of changes that occur during a lifetime. Neither of my parents were born in a hospital and both had siblings die as children. While my parents visited all 50 states, they both were born and buried in the same small town where they lived their whole lives.
Getting married in 1939 was really taking a chance. The Great Depression had dominated the 1930s and the future was still unclear. In September, wars started in both Europe and Asia that would eventually affect the U.S.
For most of the 1940s the focus was on WWII. This isn’t exactly the type of environment in which you wanted to bring children. Yet love conquers all and my folks embarked on the great adventure called marriage. Both my sister and I became part of the early Baby Boom generation.
Therefore, we grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. With the struggles facing today’s children, many people look back fondly to the “good old days.” There was no social media and cyber bullying, so life was simpler. Or was it?
While WWII was over and the U.S. changes from military production back to consumer goods, peace didn’t last long. By 1950 the U.S. was engaged in the Korean War for another three years. The conflict ended in pretty much a draw with Korea being divided.
But this ushered in a new war, the Cold War. Former allies, the USSR and the USA became antagonists with each trying to out produce the others in nuclear weapons. In addition to practicing fire drills in our schools, we also practiced for nuclear attacks. Rather than building home swimming pools, many people build bomb shelters.
Some schools were listed as Civil Defense shelters and radio stations did regular tests of the Civil Defense network. Domestic life wasn’t all smooth sailing either.
The fear of Communist infiltration fueled the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Sen. Joseph McCarthy used unfounded accusations and fear tactics to rise to prominence by accusing anyone and everyone of being a Communist sympathizer. People were afraid to challenge his “witch hunt” tactics for fear of being labeled a “Red.” By the time he was discredited, many lives of innocent people had been ruined.
Parents raising children in the 1950s had to contend with health problems unheard of today. There were no vaccines against measles, mumps, and chicken pox and we all got them. In the 1950s polio epidemics kept families afraid to go to any large gathering. It wasn’t until 1957 when the polio Salk vaccine became available, and we all got shots.
Even the miracle of penicillin wasn’t readily available until the early 50s. During this time mental illnesses were often treated by the person being incarcerated in what was often referred to as the insane asylum. The 1950s was also when racial segregation was practiced in almost all parts of the country.
As we moved into the 1960s life took on more turbulent twists. The Viet Nam War was just beginning. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy demonstrated the violence of a country. In addition, the Civil Rights Movement resulted in more unrest and violence as a nation struggled with change. Besides that, my parents had to deal with two teenagers.
Generation after generation lament the state of society during the time in which they live and look back on the “good old days.” But in reality, each generation has their own problems with which to cope.
 
Did You Ever Wonder? — If anything is possible, can anything be impossible?