The Vanishing Generation - A Tribute

Tom Brokaw called them “The Greatest Generation.” They grew up in the Great Depression. They drove some of the first automobiles on the first paved highways in America. They went to work for the Works Progress Administration and built our nation’s infrastructure. They strung wires across our country and brought electricity and telephones to homes throughout America. They bought radios and invented the first television. They landed on the beaches at Normandy, raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and defended our freedom in World War II. They were the first to enter space and chose to go to the moon. Today, their generation is vanishing from the earth. They once numbered more than twelve million but only 2.5 million survive. One thousand members of the WW II generation die every day.

This week, my mother joined that number.

Leola Harper was born on a farm near Hillsboro, Texas in 1921. When she was ten, she climbed behind the wheel of a Model A and, at her father’s instructions, drove her mother to town on gravel and asphalt roads. By the time she was a teenager she was working a team of mules. She rode to school on her horse, Prince, who had a will to run. When he raced away with her, stumbled and fell to his knees, she refused to let go until he regained his feet. In high school she won ribbons in track, played basketball and grew to love baseball.

The boys lined up to date her until my father won her over and they married in 1940. One year later, on a December afternoon that yielded to sunny skies and warm weather, she spread a blanket on the grass for a picnic with her husband and listened to the Tommy Dorsey band on the car radio. She sat stunned along with millions of her generation when the music stopped and President Roosevelt reported the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

After the war, they moved to Corsicana. Having given her life to Christ, she joined First Baptist Church along with my father and settled in to raise three sons. For more than thirty years she taught pre-school children at the church. After her husband died in 1976, she went to work as a teacher’s aid choosing to work with special needs kids. She taught them to read during the week. She rode the bus with them, hugged them and sat with them at church. After retiring, she worked for another nineteen years as a volunteer “Pink Lady” at the Corsicana hospital.

Last week, at the age of 89, still living in her home on Sycamore, she suffered a debilitating stroke and was care-flighted by helicopter to Tyler. Partially paralyzed, she was offered a feeding tube to extend her life. She declined and chose hospice care instead. She was transported home to Corsicana on Friday afternoon. Saturday evening she fought through pain and medication to spend an hour blessing her grandchildren who gathered around her bed. Twelve hours later, she departed her aging and broken body for a place prepared for her in heaven where, once again, she is young and strong and beautiful. (John 14:1-14).

This Monday, February 7, her family and friends will gather in Corsicana to say goodbye to Leola Marie Harper Tinsley and turn another page for the “greatest generation.”