What Our Fathers Endured

“The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything – meals, jobs, clothing.”Tom Brokaw

Most people of my generation have no idea what it was like. 

Compared to many others, I had it pretty easy. As the son of European ancestors living in America and a product of wonderful parents, I had tremendous advantages growing up in the 40’s and 50’s. If a good life is about ultimately reaching home plate, I started at first base.

But for poor men like my father, born in the early 1900’s and growing up during the depression, survival was a daily challenge.  For minorities and women, it was even worse.

My dad was a Teamster, a hard-working independent truck driver hauling coal, black dirt, gravel, or limestone. He had various loading equipment such as an International crawler or Ford tractor in addition to his dump truck. Later in life, he was a crane operator with the Operating Engineers.

It started out rough for dad.  At age ten, his mother died in childbirth and his father gave the new baby and the five-year-old boy, Ray, to other families. That left my father and two older girls at home on the farm. 

Feeling abandoned with his mom and little brother gone, my dad refused to accept the departure of his brother. Within days, he trekked miles across the farm fields and retrieved his brother from a neighboring farm. He couldn’t get his mother back, but his brother he could.

They were briefly separated by dad’s work on farms and ranches, riding the rails between work in the Dakotas and Minnesota, while sending money home to his family. He then found work on the pipeline in Oklahoma and Texas, and married my mother, Adele Ginter, while in Missouri in 1937. 

After returning to Illinois in 1939, Dad and his brother were again separated with Ray going into the army during WWII.  But the bond that was forged on that hand-in-hand walk across the farm fields endured for the rest of their lives, looking after one another and their father, loyal to the end.

Until my generation understands the history of men like my dad, and there were thousands, we will never fully appreciate the gifts that were given to us and the sacrifices that were made on our behalf. The story of our fathers needs to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.

“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God someday kind people won’t all be poor.” 
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath