The Gi Generation: A Memoir - Hardcover

Mathias, Frank Furlong

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813121574 ISBN 13: 9780813121574

Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky, 2000

Synopsis

Tom Brokaw calls them “The Greatest Generation.” But how did the men and women who came of age during the Great Depression become a fighting force the likes of which the world had never known?

Frank Mathias was born in Maysville, Kentucky, (pop. 7000) in 1925, and grew up in nearby Carlisle (pop. 1500). The people of his small town were much like those all across America. They were unsophisticated yet aware, peacefully patriotic, optimistic despite the Depression, biased concerning religion and race, gossipy to a fault, and naive in their belief that World War I had been the “war to end all wars.”

Much of community life focused on the local high school, which, in Mathias’s case, was a tiny one with no library, no chemistry courses, no drivers’ training, no guidance counselors. Yet the one hundred students who graduated from 1942 to 1944 became university professors, top executives, military commanders, successful investors, lawyers, and physicians. They also served faithfully and honorably in World War II, a conflict they never imagined could occur.

A vivid portrait of a bucolic Kentucky boyhood, G.I. Generation takes readers back to an era when boys rustled watermelons under the hot summer sun and young lovers danced to the sounds of farmhouse bands. Whether describing the unfortunate (but delicious) end of his brother’s pet chicken, Don, or the ominous clouds of war, Mathias writes with humor, honesty, and compassion.

“This memoir is an important reminder that urban life is not the only life: it reveals, for instance, that for people living close to their needs and far from the command-posts of the cash economy, a thing like the Great Depression could be largely irrelevant. Frank Mathias respectfully renders small-town history as a worthy piece of something larger: ourselves. America.”—Barbara Kingsolver

“An insightful look at what the ‘Greatest Generation’ was like before they fought and won the war.”—Maysville Ledger-Independent

“A well-received collection of memoirs about what is being called the Greatest Generation.”—Kettering-Oakwood (OH) Times

“A sensitive and respectful balance between the stories of his childhood and the realities of war.”—Ohioana Quarterly

“A trip down memory lane. Filled with amusing and often poignant stories, it presents a picture of a kinder, less sophisticated, more moral society.”—Bowling Green Daily News

“A memoir about the wondrous variety of daily life, even during the Depression years, that shaped the men and women of the era.”—McCormick (SC) Messenger

About this title

About the Author

Frank F. Mathias, professor emeritus of history at the University of Dayton, is the author of G.I. Jive: An Army Bandsman in World War II.

From the Inside Flap

Frank Mathias was born in Maysville, Kentucky, (pop. 7000) in 1925, and grew up in nearby Carlisle (pop. 1500), where life in his small town was much like that in towns and villages all across America. He came of age in an era of total security; his parents never even had a key to their front door. Daily living was infused with gossip; no one had a secret, and everyone knew everyone else s business. Outdoor life was a vital part of growing up, and teachers and mentors instilled a sense of right and wrong in young people.

Mathias was raised during the Great Depression and became one of the legion now called the The Greatest Generation, comprising a fighting force the likes of which the world had never known. The GI Generation is the story of how Mathias grew up within earshot of the sweet whistle of the L&N train and within the range of the smell of hot salt-rising bread and blackberry cobblers from the summer kitchen, which could instantly halt even the most rousing game of cowboys and Indians.

Much of community life focused on the local high school, which, in Mathias s case, was a tiny one with no chemistry courses, no drivers training, and no guidance counselors. Yet the one hundred students who graduated between 1942 and 1944 became university professors, top executives, military commanders, successful investors, lawyers, and physicians.

A vivid portrait of a bucolic pre-war boyhood, The GI Generation takes readers back to an era when boys rustled watermelons under the hot summer sun and young lovers danced to the sounds of farmhouse bands. Whether describing the unfortunate (but delicious) end of his brother s pet chicken, Don, or the ominous clouds of war, Mathias writes with humor, honesty, and compassion.

Reviews

Poignant moments break the narrator s nostalgic rhythm as we learn that particular playmates will later die fighting on foreign shores.

Although it meanders as a narrative, this vividly recalled, detail-rich memoir fixes its gaze on a vanished Kentucky Depression childhood in a telling resonant with the hardships and frail innocence of between-the-wars America. Mathias (G.I. Jive), professor emeritus of history at the University of Dayton, was born in 1925 and raised in a town of 1,500; his father was a traveling grocery salesman, and his early childhood was a marked mixture of the isolated, agrarian milieu and the deprivation that battered the nation. Mathias sharply etches details of this time: as with the New Deal programs that transformed his region, he notes the strange confluence of rurality with the fears and wonders provoked by technology, economic fluctuations and war clouds. Throughout, the author is understandably haunted by ex post facto consideration of how many of his pals and mentors would soon be devoured by war; he does a fine job of explicating how the triumph over fascism of these Depression-tested small-town lads ironically sparked the dissolution of their homegrown, wholesome ways. His book is good enough to make one wish it were better. Although the book's pace is rather sedate--and Mathias too often contextualizes his era through withering contrast with the two generations (Boomers and Gen-Xers) that followed--this remains a sobering, well-considered and engrossing portrait of ordinary life in a tumultuous era. 66 b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Written in the spirit of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, this is a lovingly recalled memoir of a Kentucky boy who went on to fight in World War II, with details and moments that warmly resonate for anyone of that age. An aside--that somewhere on these streets and riverbanks is the origin of the determination and courage that won the war--gives this innocent upbringing in a small American town a great deal of force. Mathias (professor emeritus, history, Univ. of Dayton) recalls friends and relatives and how they later went on to exploits overseas, sometimes giving the supreme sacrifice of their lives. Vivid and accurate, poignant and funny, this is a marvelous picture of prewar life whose readability is enhanced by its insights into what makes the American character--in one homespun kid at least.
-Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813121574
• ISBN 13: 9780813121574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 267