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Richard Lord
I appreciate Virginia's belief that our parent’s generation was the greatest generation (I give it the sacrifices of WWII) even above our generation, although I still believe our generation was greater in the all-important area of interpersonal tolerance, equality, justice, caring, and loving.
Virginia noted the caring our families gave to us, and I saw that in the families of many of my friends. I understand what that could be like. However, that did not exist for me, and so I cannot relate to it as many of you can.
I was raised by a working single mother who did not have time for me. Back then, she was a working woman in a man’s world who had to work longer, harder, and smarter just to survive in that world. Through my mother, I gained an early appreciation of the challenges of working woman trying to raise families.
When my family broke up in CT, I lost my older sisters who were of age and left home as they wanted out of the dysfunctional and now impoverished family situation. My mother took the family dog with us for my sentimentality sake, but we could not afford me let alone it. The was the one day with mother out working with no food in the house that I had to decide to feed a can of Alpo dog food to the dog or eat it myself. We split and shared it.
Back then there was no family safety net, like we have now, thanks to our generation.
We moved to Newton when my mother got a better job. My mother was beautiful, attractive, smart, and tough, and that is what got her into the man’s world of business back then. I at least got her toughness.
There were times when I knew she felt she would be better off without me so she could lead her own life without the burden of me. I loved my mother and I also did not want her to have the burden of me. Our junior year, I was one of two junior starters on the varsity football team. After the third game, I got a concussion after a particularly brutal practice. After practice, my teammates and coaches found me upright but practically unconscious standing under a shower well after everyone else had left. After getting out of the hospital, and having had a spinal tap, yes, a spinal tap, I was off the varsity. Now with a traumatic brain injury, and suffering from depression from being kicked off the varsity, and knowing my mother had the even greater burden of having to care for an injured and depressed child, I decided to leave and let my mother have a life. I purchased a bus ticket as far as my money would take me, which was Las Vegas, but the bus company called home to inform me of a schedule change, and my mother took the call. That was the end of that when she took away my bus ticket. I never told anyone about this until now.
This was a catharsis of sorts for my mother, but still she did have time for me. She never went to any of my high school or college football games. I was pretty much on my own for learning and living.
I was a Division II kid, and my guidance counselor did not recommend I go to college. Turns out I have the cognitive writing disorder “Dysgraphia” where I can barely legibalbly sign my own name. This is a family trait that occurs for some of us. My cousin Emily Dickenson had this disorder. When I switched from writing long-hand to printing essay responses, my grades dramatically improved. That, and as I also have hearing loss due to colds and resultant ear infections, I began to sit in the front of the class rather than the back so I could hear. I got colds and ear infections when the land lord turned off our heat when my mother could not pay the rent. As the Chairman of a Community Action Program, recently when I received a check for $7,000 from a Rotary Club for our energy assistance program to pay home heating bills for the impoverished, I told them my story, and said if this money can save a child from illness and hearing loss in not having heat in the home, this is one of the greatest gifts they can give to a child – hearing. Our generation is responsible for such programs as this.
I worked my way through college on scallop boats out of New Bedford. I made enough money in the summers to about make it through a school year. The job of fisherman is THE most dangerest job in the world. I also had jobs during school. I had credit in bars in New Bedford, as well as bar fights, mostly over women, and also in Gloucester as I had fisherman friends there, all before I was 21. I was in all the bars named in the Perfect Storm 10 years before the event. We fished the George’s Banks, a day and a half out from New Bedford, and there was no safe haven in which to go in a storm. My boat was almost lost in a storm, but it was not enough of a perfect storm. I graduated from college in 1969 with no financial help and no debt. I also got my MPA degree in 1975 with no help or debt, but as I now had experience in program evolution working in a HUD funded Model Cites program, my graduate school job was the Assistant Director of Instructional Evaluation for the university.
The bottom line is I have less affinity for our parent’s generation than many of you with complete and functional families caring for you as they aught where I lacked that support and appreciation of such a family life. I also like to think I am a better parent than my parents. My first job was as the Director of a Boys’ Clubs of America in an African American community in Trenton NJ, I learned early on the value of youth self-esteem, and always treated my youth with dignity and respect. That carried over to my family, and my youngest daughter (MFA degree and the Supervisor of Costumes for Women Soloists for the Metropolitan Opera in NYC) once said to me, in observing families of friends, “Dad, not only did you never hit or spank us, but you never even called us stupid.”
So, yes, I still believe our generation is greater than our parent’s generation, and I am a better member of the human family and parent than my parents.
Richard Lord
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