Tuesday, March 13, 2018

During my mother's life (1919-2018) ...

our wedding, Dec. 20, 1969
L-R: Dad, Mom, Dan, Joyce, Annabelle and Thomas Coyne


  • the following people were President of the United States:
    • Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump
  • The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I
  • Charlie Chaplin and friends formed United Artists
  • Proust published the volumes of In Search of Lost Time
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby
  • Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • the 19th amendment granted the vote to women (stunning: when my mom was born, women in the U.S.A. could not vote!)
  • the Ku Klux Klan rose again
  • November 11 (my birthday!) designated as Armistice Day (for WW I)--later changed to Veterans Day
  • Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted
  • the Roaring Twenties
  • the Great Depression
  • the rise of fascism in Europe
  • the movies transitioned from silent to sound
  • the development of jet airliners
  • the movies transitioned from black-and-white to color
  • from records to tapes to CD's to iTunes
  • the invention of television
  • the invention of color television
  • the invention of cable television
  • the invention of the personal computer
  • the invention of the Internet
  • the invention of the smart phone
  • men landed and walked on the moon
  • Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
  • World War II
  • the Korean War
  • the Vietnam War
  • our Middle Eastern wars
  • Sinclair Lewis and Hemingway and Faulkner won Nobel Prizes
  • the Cleveland Cavaliers
  • Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson
  • Civil Rights
  • women's rights
  • gender and sexual rights
  • Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Eminem, Taylor Swift, BeyoncĂ©, swing, rock-n-roll, rap, country, folk, hip hop
  • Jim Crow
  • end of school segregation (or so we thought)
  • the murders of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy
  • the Kent State shootings
  • the atomic bomb
  • a marriage to Charles Edward Dyer (October 12, 1939)
  • the births of three sons: Richard Morgan (December 29, 1941), Daniel Osborn (November 11, 1944), Edward Davis (September 17, 1948)
  • the marriages of Dan and Dave
    • the births of grandsons Steve and Ricky, granddaughter Bella
    • the births of great-grandsons Logan (2005) and Carson (2009)
  • the death of her husband (November 30, 1999)
  • a long reflection on an amazing life--public school teacher, graduate student (she earned her Ph.D.), scholar (she published books and articles), professor (Drake University); an amazing early retirement in Cannon Beach, Oregon, in a home she designed overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Haystack Rock, a move to Massachusetts as Dad's health declined, her slow, sad movement from independent living, to assisted living, to nursing
  • her enduring good humor and equanimity in the face of all
Oh, there is so much more, isn't there? Impossible to list a life, especially a life of wonder.

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