The Greatest Generation was born at the end of World War I, lived as children through the Great Depression and then fought and died in World War II. The Americans in that generation transformed their county into a world leader and, for a time, offered the solution to all the world's problems. The Great Generation defeated Nazism and Imperial Japan, stood up to communism and the Iron Curtain, put a man on the moon and ushered in the computer age. (They also ushered in rampant materialism, defended Jim Crow and immersed the US in the Vietnam War.)
My father, Barney Smith, Jr., was born in Texarkana in 1921 and grew up in Beaumont, Texas before spending one brief failing semester at the University of Texas in 1940. Then he signed up to fight Hitler and spent most of the second World War bouncing around US army airfields. At the end of the war, he returned to Texas, went to UT on the GI bill and graduated with a law degree. Shortly after arriving in Austin at the end of the war, he met a young coed from San Antonio. He married her 13 months later in her parent's home (with only her family as witnesses.) Days after Barney walked in graduation for his JD degree, his young wife delivered their first child, a son. (They named the child Kenneth Woodward after Barney's favorite professor.) After graduation Barney practiced law (briefly) and then became a university professor, teaching at the University of Houston for 11 years before moving to Western Illinois University. He died in July 2007, days before his 59th wedding anniversary.
Before he died, I asked my father to record his life story. He did that on a series of audio tapes. Here, as best as I have them (slightly edited) is his story.
The story is not particularly remarkable. But that is the beauty of it. It is the story of a "typical" member of the Greatest Generation, growing up in eastern Texas during the depression. He worked hard, believed in "doing right" and lived a full life. Education (and the GI-bill) changed his life. His life was also molded and changed (for the better) by a developing sense of God's love, by the steadfast and patient love of his wife, and (eventually) the love and respect of his three children.
In the next post, I will start Dad's audio tape. We will return to small Texarkana, Texas at the beginning of the twentieth century.
