A generation's legacy

The term "greatest generation" was coined just 10 years ago, but it seems as if it's been around forever. Tom Brokaw's book title described the generation of Americans who came of age during the Depression, fought a world war on foreign shores as well as on the home front, then led one of the most productive periods in U.S. industry.

The phrase can rankle, implying that no other generation has measured up, nor ever will. But cultural debates aren't the point of the Minnesota Historical Society's newest exhibit, "Minnesota's Greatest Generation," which opens today at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. Rather, its cradle-to-today treatment takes this particularly gregarious group from its origins as kids crazy about Charles Lindbergh to adults walking beneath the sleekly corrugated roof of the Lindbergh Terminal.

"This generation had a group identity like no other," said Dan Spock, the museum's director, standing before an enlarged photo of young boys, half of whom are wearing leather flight helmets like their aviator hero. "We've found more group photos than we've ever encountered." People formed clubs like the Lions, Rotary and Kiwanis, as well as bowling leagues, sewing circles, you name it.

Such group activity may have sprung from how they increasingly had common experiences, Spock said. Consider the community that formed around the drugstore soda fountain on many Main Streets -- a spot where many heard the radio reports during World War II. This generation went on to share the new experiences of comic books -- Superman appeared in 1938 -- and then television, which with so few networks reached great swaths of the population with its shows, commercials and jingles. The exhibit explores this "realm of memory" through the voices of dozens of Minnesotans.

One of them is Millie Bowers Johnson, who was born in the Goodhue County town of Belle Creek in 1922. She was born at home, hers being the last generation for which this was not a birthing choice, but a simple practicality.

She remembers returning home from church on Dec. 7, 1941, to find her mother sobbing. "I remember that day because she felt so bad, because I had two younger brothers and she was afraid they'd be called into service." They were part of the exodus of young men that opened the door to unexpected opportunities for women like Millie Bowers.

Through a Works Progress Administration program, she and several girlfriends (again, always the groups) enrolled in a class to learn architectural drawing and riveting. Her skills got her a job at the B-24 Modification Center at St. Paul's Holman Field, installing gun turrets on B-24s. "There were lots of women at Holman Field," she said. "But the job ended once all the planes had been equipped."

Life's sudden turn

The exhibit's centerpiece lies within a real C-47 airplane that has "crashed" into a French cottage. With visitors seated on the hard seats that line the walls of the barren cabin, just as a paratrooper would have been, the multimedia treatment puts them on the approach to Normandy Beach on D-Day.

Tracer bullets arc past the windows while the plane shudders with the percussion of ammo exploding below. In the audio, the voices of Minnesotans -- Bill Bowell, Jim Carroll, John Hinchliff -- recount their experiences as paratroopers on D-Day, while Vivian McMorrow talks of receiving a telegram that her husband had been wounded that day, only to later learn that he had died.

The effect is disturbingly real, and humbling, as you imagine what it must have been like to jump out of a plane into the chaos of those skies. In fact, a posted notice advises visitors of its realistic nature, because the experience may unearth some old emotions.

The exhibit literally makes a sharp turn after the plane, mirroring how suddenly life changed. "We were at war, and then we weren't," Spock said. Around the corner lies the 1950s with its technological leaps: watching TV, taking shirts to the dry cleaners, wiping Formica countertops, hosting Tupperware parties, cruising in hot cars rolling out of St. Paul's Ford Assembly Plant.

Servicemen returned home, but with a sense of having seen the world. This was the generation that founded the United Nations, oversaw the civil rights movement, and invented indoor shopping malls.

For many families, the rest of this story is familiar, the stuff of dinner-table conversations, family reunion reminiscing and, in some cases, a little sermonizing. After all, this generation recalls the Great Depression, a world war and a country's rebuilding. When Brokaw deemed it "the greatest," few could argue.

As Millie Bowers Johnson said, "I really agree that this was the greatest generation, especially after the war ended," she said. "It was a time when everybody was happy with what they had. We probably didn't have much, but we were happy with what we had."

Kim Ode • 612-673-7185