In My Grandmother's Lifetime

On July 29, my Grandmother will celebrate her 98th birthday. At this age, she doesn’t have any gift requests and no great demands for celebration. But, whenever anyone reaches 98, it is a fairly momentous occasion.

My Grandmother is the oldest of five children. She is the wife of the late Jacob A. Hawk and mother to two wonderful women (my mom and my aunt). She has seven grandchildren (at 40, I am the youngest), eleven great grandchildren, and three great, great grandchildren (well, almost four—one is on the way!).

In her lifetime, our world has changed, dramatically, both in the United States and around the globe. Here’s a sampling:

Since 1911, we’ve added four states to the Union: Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and Hawai’i.

We’ve had 18 presidents: Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama.

Twelve amendments have been added to the U.S. Constitution; one of those was repealed.

Women gained the right to vote in all 50 states. The first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to Congress as representative of the great state of Montana. And while the first African American, John Mercer Langston, was elected to Congress in 1888, it would take another forty years to repeat that, with Oscar De Priest in 1928. The first African American woman, Shirley Chisholm, would not get there until 1968.

The first African American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, would arrive in 1967. The first woman Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, would be appointed in 1981. We will probably have our first Latina Supreme Court Justice soon, making for a grand total of three women to sit on the highest court.

And, on November 4, 2008, the first African American became President of the United States. (He is also the first president born in the great state of Hawai’i.)

Our country has fought in two World Wars; suffered through the attacks of Pearl Harbor and September 11th, assassinations of civil rights leaders at home and abroad, a president, a presidential candidate, and foreign leaders aiming for peace. My Grandmother lived through the Stock Market Crash and subsequent Great Depression, the baby boom, and the atomic age. She saw a president resign his office and another impeached (though he was eventually found not guilty).

The Titanic sank, the Lusitania was destroyed, the Great Spanish Flu pandemic swept the globe, the Hindenburg erupted in flames on landing, Chernobyl had a meltdown, the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia exploded (one on take-off, the other on re-entry), and Nazi Germany perpetrated one of the greatest genocides in history, the Shoah.

In Grandmother’s lifetime, we were introduced to the writings of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Maya Angelou, Alex Haley, and so much more. We met Holden Caulfield, Jay Gatsby, Atticus Finch, Holly Golightly, Scarlett O’Hara, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, The Cat in the Hat, Sam Spade, Charlotte the Spider, Tarzan, Celie, James Bond, Lucy Pevensie and Aslan.

We went to the moon six times; the age of visual technology was born. Airplanes went from short trips at 150 feet to commercial transatlantic flights at 36,000 feet. Cars went from the few to hundreds of models affordable to most. Computers were invented and went from occupying whole rooms to a hand-held phone. Telephones went from crank boxes to rotary dial to push button to remote and finally to cellular. Gramophone records went from 33 1/3 to 45 and were replaced by 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, then CDs and finally to mere computer files that can be downloaded onto a device no bigger than a mint box. Radios got smaller, too!

Russia went from Tsar to Communism to whatever it is now. The Berlin Wall went up and was torn down; apartheid started and ended, Israel (as well as who knows how many other countries) came into being.

Films went from silent to talkies to color—we now have digital and 3D options. Tickets to see a film went from five cents for a double feature with newsreels and a few shorts to $8.00 for a matinee. Television was invented and followed the same course: black and white to color. Now we have cable and 500 channels and along with television came the VCR and the DVD player to the Blu-Ray and DVR. The Internet was developed and has literally connected the world.

Aerosol spray, antibiotics, frozen foods, hearing aids, quartz timekeeping, ballpoint pens, the helicopter, Polaroid, sticky tape, nylon, Spam, the aqualung, kidney dialysis, napalm, Velcro, the credit card, robots, the first satellite, Sputnik, was launched, fiber optics, the pacemaker, Kevlar, lasers, the portable calculator, the Bar Code, in vitro fertilization, and Cabbage Patch dolls.

All this has happened in my Grandmother’s lifetime.

UPDATE: My Grandmother passed away in her home on a quiet Saturday morning, June 15, 2013.  She had been battling pneumonia and had been hospitalized for it but she told her doctor that she just wanted to go home.  She would have turned 102 on July 29.

I flew to Tennessee for the services and again enjoyed a reunion with our extended family, though this occasion was more bitter than sweet. Since then, our family on both sides has been gathering stories and photos. How much has changed since her passing?  Much. But that is the nature of Time.