The Vanishing Generation
General
I feel really fortunate for my son and I to have a WWII navy vet as my son's scoutmaster. Mr. Green turned 84 I think it was in May. He said he'd never been on a train and certainly not west of Nashville when his time came to serve. But he boarded a train with a bunch of other boys who signed up with the navy, and they rode cross-country to California to ship out. He'd obviously never been at sea and was sick all the way across the ocean. Eventually, he spent much of his time in the service as land support for the ships.
The man is incredible. He still runs a local real estate practice with his wife. He has about 50 acres of land and about 25 head of cattle. He spends every Tuesday night helping the Senior Patrol Leader run his program for about 80 scouts. And he spends 2 hours about 45-50 Saturdays of the year teaching basic skills to new scouts - knots, lashings, first aid, fire making, etc. He has spent basically his whole life in Franklin TN & is a human encyclopedia of local history. He still leads the boys on their first 5 mile hike & tells him historical anecdotes along the way.
He laughs a little bit at times now about how young he was, how lost he was aboard the ship, and so on. But he'll often turn serious and mist forms in his eyes as he'll tell you "We were just boys. The stuff we saw. The things we had to do." And then his voice will trail off.
One of the scouts who is a friend of my son and whose dad I've become friends with myself has been struggling with what to do for an Eagle project. He is into movie making/videography. I've encouraged him to consider a video project with Mr. Green. Sit down with the man and capture his life's journey before he is gone. Make a nice documentary and give it to our local library or historical commission. He hadn't thought about it before, but he is now. I've told him time is of the essence though because at 84 getting to 85 isn't an automatic thing.
