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Carol Stanton (FL)'s avatar

Thanks, TC. I am thinking how important for all of us to create our own primary sources for our experiences of our times-- for the sake of our families and for history. We already know that too often the official remembrances of things past are versions that "disappear" whole swaths of us even long before we fade away in actual time!! The intentional and ideological erasing you describe makes it even more critical that we resist that effort but at the same time document our own experiences and entrust those to responsible "keepers" (so as to avoid the landfill!) I would have loved to have had diaries from my great grandmothers on immigration from Ireland and Germany and from my grandmothers and great aunts on how they lived through the 1918 pandemic and two World Wars. The ones I did know spoke so little of their feelings and experiences. And now I am the oldest holder of memories for a tribe of about 60 nieces, nephews, cousins and brothers and sisters 2 decades younger than I. Some of them want to know. It is a responsibility for those of us of a certain age to keep sharing the parts we have lived and to keep searching for how it really was for others, as you do in your many books.

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BetsyC (WA)'s avatar

TC, the 8th Air Force holds an annual reunion. We had 11 WWII vets in Savannah last October. My dad was part of the 351st Bomb Group stationed in Polebrook England flying B-17s. Clark Gable was with the 351st for part of his tour of duty.....not that my dad ever talked about it. Lots of info about their missions on 351st.org. We, the kids of the veterans, are trying to get the next generations interested so that the program can keep going. We didn't have any of our veterans this year. There really are very few left.

We have got to remember.

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