Saturday, September 20, 2008

The first step to creating greatness is studying the past

I attended a conference last year and Tom Brokaw was the key note speaker. He made a compelling speech. A significant portion of which was devoted to his recent book "The Greatest Generation". His speech lasted nearly an hour and I am forever affected by his words. At times my eyes welled up with the realization of the selfless hard work, innovations and supreme sacrifices that our fore citizens, specifically our WWII era citizens made for the betterment of our country. They made it better than they could imagine. For my convenience I bought the audio book version of "The Greatest Generation". I've read many books and I can honestly say no other book other than the Bible has ever made such an impact on me. I have a much different view of our senior citizens. I have redirected my goals. It's influenced me to take steps to being a more valuable father, husband, employee and American. This WWII generation of Americans entrusted us with the fruits of there life’s work. A proven strong military to protect our nation and our allies, a thriving economy, the selfless heart to make a better world. They handed us the baton and in many aspects I feel that we have dropped it. Let's work together and honor our fore citizens by making the United States of America stronger than we can imagine.

3 comments:

Tom said...
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daltonsbriefs said...

I think each generation brought us something to remember and also things to learn from

The question in my mind is what will gen x and the millenials bring? Will they sqaunder the gains of the 20th century? Or will they use technology to vault us to even greater?

daltonsbriefs said...

Tom, the contributions since WW II have been important, but we as a generation have not done a good job of remembering lessons of previous generations. We tend to have pretty high views of ourselves. Hubris I think.