November 23rd, 2011 Posted in Boomer News, family | 2 Comments »
David Brooks, NY Times columnist has asked for a brief report from readers over 70 about their life, divided into life categories, and thoughts on the younger generation. I get to share my life experiences with our 5 children and 11 grandchildren on my blog. Like David Brooks, I lament the loss of a formal rite of passage for young people. There is a commercial on TV where an older boy sitting at the table with the younger kids, gets asked to sit with the adults. The Thanksgiving dinner get-together is as close as we come these days to a rite of passage as the children are brought into adult conversation to be heard.
I’m 80 and I’m still learning & appraising what I have done well and what I haven’t done well. Okay kids, if you haven’t heard grandpa’ s “Life Report” before … here goes: My father died at age 3 … I had questions within my emerging conscious mind that I didn’t fully understand. It took 3 months for the longing to subside. My mother became a widow with 6 children in the midst of the depression. There were no grand parents and not a cousin, aunt or uncle to be seen. My mother said I was special as I was born with a Veil over my face . (An uplifting lasting comment). I was socially isolated ’til age 5. I was considered a slow learner ’til the 5th grade. My Boomer News blog name comes from my 1941 one-page hand-written newspaper I wrote for my grammar school classmates. I was a poor-reading dyslexic kid, who had a break-through year because of the encouragement of an amazingly clever 5th grade teacher. Talks with my curious, imaginative mother over tea made me an inquisitive kid. I was a happy kid. In the 8th grade I decided to be an engineer. I had the lowest grades of the college preparatory students in high school. I had the toughest teacher. In my junior and senior years I got seven Ds got a D+ as my final mark. In the first class after my graduation, this English teacher told the new class that your grandpa never gave up and really earned that D+ mark.
At 18 I worked days & went to an engineering college at night. College was interrupted by the Korean war. After infantry basic training, I missed two ships to Korea. I was pulled from the ranks to be in Ike’s inaugural . After the inaugural … orders for Korea were changed to Germany. Chance played an important part in my life. I was still socially inept at age 27, when I met the woman I married. She saved my life. She is the mortar that has held me and our 5 children together. My career developed slowly … draftsman, apprentice & then in 1958 I graduated as an associate engineer .There were about 40 graduates. Mostly WWII & Korean vets taught by local industry engineers at night. CT Governor Abraham Ribicoff gave the commencement address. The school finally included liberal arts subjects and I received my Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1966 with 4 of our 5 children in the audience. Believe it or not kids, I was quiet, had working inquisitive and open minded. I did well during my first 25 years of work. My work spoke for itself. Vacuum tubes were fascinating but now obsolete. My skills revolved around light sources. I worked on a very successful semiconductor wafer printer machine. As part of that effort I set up a lamp factory within a Research department. (That is an oxymoron kids). It was very successful. We made a lot of money for the company in a very small shop.
At age 45 I was promoted to engineering management. It was something I didn’t do well. I became a maverick . I was hard to understand. At times brutally honest. I often became frustrated because my inability to sell my message. I continued to work on interesting projects like in lithography, optical coating, and the Chandra Telescope but in an engineering capacity until I retired at age 70.
I generated a list of hobbies to do in retirement. My wife and our children have always been priority # one. When our kids were growing up … they would go “do-do, do-do” with a spinning finger pointing to the sky, to tell there mom that dad thoughts were up in the clouds again. I’ve written them a book called Generation to Generation in hopes of explaining my sometimes obscure mental pathways to arrive at a point, (meaning I am hard to understand).
With the help of a son, I began the Boomer News blog. Now It’s an 80 year old grandpa writing to our eleven grandchildren since 2006 … 400 blogs covering about 20 categories. I’m trying to sum up all the blogs & write a book on the blogs called “Balanceology”. An original word & idea? … I tell the kids there is nothing new under the sun … but don’t be discouraged … Mother Nature will never give up all her secrets. That is why Grandpa picked cosmology, the brain & conscious mind as the two most interesting categories for us to study. We have come up with the Nested Universes concept, all in the interest of curiosity & imagination .
The age of the grandchildren was a new born to age 16 in 2006. By 2007 an article suggested kids 12 to 29 had completely left using the blog in favor of the social networks. They stopped visiting grandpas blog. That’s okay, I knew they would come back. This summer, two had returned to talk to their grandpa about the interesting subjects they were learning. A senior in high school and a 1st year college student.
I expect mutually interesting conversation this Thanksgiving. A time for fun and reflection. The kids will poke fun at their grandpa … his Nested Universes concept and his suggesting he is the first Balanceologist. Hopefully each grandchild comes away feeling they have something to offer and they are loved. Thanksgiving can be a rite of passage for the grandchildren.
