"The past is never dead. It's not even past," -- William Faulkner
Two hundred and forty-five years have passed since 1776. In one way, that seems like a long time. In another, it's not. If you measure a lifetime at 70 years, then just a little more than three and a half lifetimes have passed since the Declaration.In the weeks ahead, we shall talk about the Civil War, which cast a shadow well into the 20th century. A CMC professor named Orme Phelps was the son of a Civil War veteran. I knew him when he was an emeritus professor.
In 1938, FDR addressed veterans of Gettysburg. (Do the math: there were still people alive who fought in the battle.) Notice his words in the context of contemporary debates about Confederate monuments.
A 1956 TV quiz show featured a purported eyewitness to the Lincoln assassination:
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As of 2020, there were approximately 90,000 centenarians in the United States (https://theconversation.com/3-big-ways-that-the-us-will-change-over-the-next-decade-126908). Roughly 100 years before 2020 was the 1918 Influenza pandemic. This means that just under 90,000 people in the United States lived to experience two pandemics.
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