Growing up in northern Kentucky, honesty, integrity and character were revered traits, and - with my family - I looked to the greatest generation of Americans who saved the world during World War II.
I often think that the Greatest Generation gave birth to the Crappiest Generation, the stinky hippies with their slacktivism and demand for government welfare in the name of freedom.
We must continue to ensure that the legacy of the Greatest Generation is preserved and protected so that all Americans can work to embody the ideals and values of those that came before them.
It does not have to be that the greatest generation is behind us. It does not have to be that our children will have a lower standard of living. It will be that way if we choose to believe that. I choose not to believe that.
Americans have a profound longing for heroes - now perhaps more than ever. We need our explorers, our sports icons, our Medal of Freedom winners, our Nobel laureates. We need our Greatest Generation warriors, our 'Sully' Sullenbergers, our Neil Armstrongs. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat.
I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.
Every movement that slays its gods creates new ones, of course. I loathe talk of the sixties and seventies being a 'Greatest Generation' of artists, but if we're going to use such idiotic appellations, let this one also be applied to the artists, curators, and gallerists who emerged in the first half of the nineties.
World War II brought the Greatest Generation together. Vietnam tore the Baby Boomers apart.
We have the new greatest generation. We don't need as large a military due to the technology we have, the equipment we have outfitting our personnel. They really are storm troopers.
The thought of losing Ted Stevens, a man who was known to business and community leaders, Native chiefs and everyday Alaskans as Uncle Ted, is too difficult to fathom. He truly was the greatest of the Greatest Generation.
