We Gen Xers are in our 50s now. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably found yourself looking back more often. Not just at the music, movies, and culture that shaped us, but at the people who built the foundation we didn’t even know we were standing on.
For me, life was split into two halves. Until I was about twelve, I lived next door to my father’s parents. After my parents divorced, I spent most of my time with my mother’s parents. That meant I got a heavy dose of the World War II generation from both sides — but in very different ways.
On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a Kentucky boy turned infantryman, who fought at the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. If I could pay a million dollars to go back, I’d give it just to sit again on that living room couch on a hot Saturday, listening to him ramble. He’d talk about Europe, Africa, Italy, Germany, France. His stories weren’t polished or rehearsed — they just came spilling out, the way war stories do when they’ve been bottled up too long. Some funny, some rough, some bitter. He never forgave the French after the war. That was just his reality, and as kids, we soaked it in without realizing how rare it was to hear history straight from the source.
On my father’s side, the story was different. My grandfather there was a WWII sailor. But he never spoke about his service. Not once. The only evidence I ever had was a picture of him in uniform. Maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe he just did his duty and came home. But he locked it away, never opened that chapter around me. And that silence was just as powerful as the stories on the other side — because it showed another version of strength.
And then there was my dad. He served during the Vietnam years, roughly 1969 to ’72. He took his father’s advice: “The draft will take you, so pick your path. Go Navy.” And he did. He ended up on the USS Charles H. Roan (DD-853), a Gearing-class destroyer, working down below as a fireman, an engine man. His ship traveled the world — South America, Africa, Asia, even briefly into Vietnam waters — but he never saw combat. And in the end, his service was cut short. Nothing dramatic, maybe just a little discipline, maybe just the Navy being the Navy, but enough that he was discharged earlier than some of his peers.
So in my family, I had three examples of service:
- A grandfather who told his war stories openly, sometimes raw, sometimes rambling.
- A grandfather who never spoke a word about it, keeping it locked inside.
- A father who served his time in the engine room of a destroyer, stayed out of combat, and came home early.
Three different paths, three different outcomes, but all woven into the same generation of duty and sacrifice.
And here’s the thing: those voices — whether loud, silent, or cut short — shaped me. They shaped a lot of us in Gen X. We didn’t just grow up with TV or latchkey afternoons. We grew up in the shadow of the Depression and World War II, carried by people who were practical because they had no choice. They had lived through breadlines, blackouts, and battles. And even if they didn’t talk about it, their presence was enough to leave its mark.
That’s probably why so many of us lean traditional today. Not in a political slogan sense, but in a lived, practical sense. We were raised in a world where structure mattered, where everybody had their place and their job, and somehow it just worked. Families functioned. Neighborhoods functioned. Life wasn’t easy, but it had order, and that gave us something solid to stand on.
Gen X absorbed that. And now, looking back, I see how much of it still runs in our veins. We were shaped by grandparents who carried the war, parents who carried the contradictions of the boom, and a culture that often left us to figure it out on our own.
That mix made us skeptical but strong. Cynical, but hopeful. Independent, but grounded in traditions that worked. And now, maybe for the first time, we’re finally sharing those stories with each other. Not with labels, not with diagnoses, but with honesty.
Because that was our reality. That was our normal. And it made us who we are.
