Graduates -- been there, done that

During the pleasant springtime of the last year of peace, 1939, this adolescent was graduated from Shepherdstown, W.Va., High School. (It was protocol for all boys under 16 to wear knickers, but since my own 16th was just a couple of months away, my father allowed me to wear long pants. As the kids of a much later generation would put it now: "man, what a DUDE!" No, I was not Valedictorian, but placed right up there as second in a class of 16.)

It wasn't until 13 years later I was awarded my Bachelor of Science degree --- then married with four daughters and a veteran of a long and combative World War II. NOTE to 2009 graduates: I got there after the GI Bill let my generation give some payback after their military service. The last and final degree was that of M.D. Since no one ought to quit learning, there were other citations of Board certification and honorary fellowships defining my long and happy career in medicine lasting 50 years.

I know the thrills and the glory, and I am acutely aware via memory of having undergone the greatest stress that not even the Japanese could dish out. Like I said, "been there, done that --- and I am with you --- all of you, Generation X."

Things looked mighty unstable after I finished the High School scene. The Depression was still on us, and few of my age and socioeconomic status (poor) were going to college. Unemployment stood at its current level and wouldn't get better until we became embroiled in the mess in Europe. We danced to "Deep Purple" and jitter-bugged to "Swing, Swing, Swing." Fiercely patriotic in our small town, I counted seven of my graduating class who were killed in World War II.

There was only one war going on, but that one was a dozy! The intervening group called the Boomers --- your parents --- fought a foreign war in Viet Nam and a populace back home, to our shame. They came back better men and women and qualify for the leadership they had to assume.

And so will you, for you are young Americans, and they don't come any better than that. God's blessings be yours from this old heart.