Each generation has its own special memories.

My parents were living on the other side of Butler County in 1943, the year that I was born, but those who grew up in this part of the world experienced the same situation, information, cost of living, and type of lifestyle that I am going to share with you today.

I was born during World War II, so that made me older than the “Baby Boom” generation and younger than the Depression generation. Still, there were some very notable and memorable things that went on, besides my birth. The following is a small grouping of those happenings.

The New York Yankees won the World Series (go figure). The Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. The Heisman Trophy winner was Angelo Bertelli of Notre Dame. Wyoming won the NCAA Basketball championship. The U.S. Golf Open was not held, due to the war. The Indianapolis 500 was not held due to the war.

CASABLANCA won the Best Picture at the Acadamy Awards, but Paul Lukas won best actor, not Bogey, for the movie, “Watch On The Rhine”. Ya think it mighta had something to do with the war? Who ever heard of Paul Lukas in this day and age, but at least 1 out of 10 people have said, “Here’s looking at you, kid”, and remember where it came from, even 70 years later.

The top Pro Football team was, of course, the Chicago Bears, and Johnny Longden rode Count Fleet to the Winners Circle in the Kentucky Derby.

War Bonds were sold at $18.75 to help finance the war. In ten years, you could receive $25 when you cashed them in. For you math geniuses, that is $4 for every $3 that you gave to the Cause. The average income was $2041 per household. A brand-spanking new automobile cost $900. A new house cost $3600. A loaf of bread was 10 cents. A gallon of gas was 15 cents. A gallon of milk was 71 cents. Gold was $35. per ounce. Silver was 71 cents per ounce. The Dow Jones Average on the stock market was 134.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (my mother-in-law’s 54th cousin, according to her, and several genealogy books) was President of the United States and Henry Wallace was Vice President. Jean Bartel of Los Angeles, Ca, was Miss America. Life expectancy was 62.9 years, unless you were fighting in the Far East or some cold, muddy, awful battleground in France.

Joe Namath, Bill Bradley, Chevy Chase, and I were all born in 1943, along with Mick Jagger and Ronnie Milsap. Everybody who owned a car wanted to keep it “Simonized”, to protect the finsh and, according to the ads, give it a like-new finish. Packard was building Rolls-Royce engines to put into the Navy’s PT boats, deHaviland Mosquito bombers, Lancaster bombers, Hurricane and Warhawk fighter planes. Sylvania was building electronic gear that helped us see and hear the enemy coming, whether in the air, on the ground, or under the sea. One of the fondest things that a parent could buy their daughter was a LANE Cedar Chest, to store her precious items of the future in, what they lovingly called their “Hope Chest”..The cost was $39.50 in 1943. Ask a furniture store what they sell for today.

Quaker Flour, Simonds bicycle tires, Triangle shoe dressing, Waltham time pieces (watches and clocks), Bond Street pipe tobacco, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Stetson hats, and Band-aids made by Johnson & Johnson were some of the things that you bought at your store. The Pentagon, the world’s largest office building was completed at a cost of $64 million dollars. Rommel was routed by the U.S. Army at Kasserine Pass, in the desert in North Africa. Mussolini was deposed and killed, as Italy surrendered to General Eisenhower, the German Army surrendered at Stalingrad, Russia, and Japan withdrew from Guadalcanal.

An awful lot of very good men said goodbye to us in those days, never to return to their loved ones, so that we might have the Land of the Free and the Brave. History is Not “His Story”. It is your story and my story, and the ones who went before us, to pave the way.