To the editor:

I was born in 1932 and thus was exempt from personal involvement in the fighting of World War II. I came from a small community with a population of about 3,000 and a rural county — Bent County, Colo. –with about 6,000 residents. This county lost 47 young men and one woman in the fighting. All were known to everyone who lived in the county. We mourned those lost and gave support to their families.

My memories are vivid about the return home by those who had served. They entered this war after having experienced the Great Depression. That plus the war experience molded them into the adults I grew up with in the 1950s and beyond. Most of them are now gone and what has been substantially lost is their attitudes

about life, its duties and its responsibilities. These were tough no-nonsense people who valued personal responsibility, hard work and respect for others and their property. When you shook hands with them, you knew you were shaking hands with someone who had endured and accomplished much, but with the attitude that this was what they were supposed to do.

They were indeed, as Tom Brokaw wrote, the Greatest Generation. Let us remember them and that time in the 1950s when America experienced the peace and prosperity they created.

Jack Kelly,

Lawrence