Kids and Family — The Paradox of the American Utopia and Camelot

My parents Walter and Nelda joined millions of other young couples by contributing me (born July 5, 1950) along with my two brothers Wendell and Wesley to a massive group of 75 million babies born between 1946 and 1964, who would be known as the post-World War II Baby Boomer Generation.

We arrived into a world where the air was filled with optimism from America’s victory in World War II, a thriving economy with room to grow, and cheap energy with gas being only 15 cents a gallon. We were raised by a generation of parents ready, willing, and (for the most part) able to give their offspring anything they wanted. Optimism was America’s lifeblood.

As a result, we Baby Boomers grew up thinking we were special and unique. Our parents even told us so:

“Nothing is gonna be too good for my kids.”

“My kids will get the chances I didn’t get. They’ll do things with their lives I couldn’t. They’re gonna be a helluva lot better off than I was because they won’t have the same hardships I had growing up in the Depression and going off to war.”

But all wasn’t perfect. We Baby Boomers soon understood the world could end at any moment in the flash of an atomic bomb as we huddled under our school desks.

However, when we weren’t under those desks, we learned America was perfect and always won. After all, fairness and justice were spelled out for us in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We were a melting pot society that offered equal opportunity to anyone and everyone. And we were told that if a shoeshine boy was willing to work hard, and sacrifice, he had a chance to move from immigrant status to reach the upper echelons of American society.

Just like the Kennedy’s.

Read more