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Quote of the Day: Longevity
“If you’re starting a new job today and intend to match Queen Elizabeth’s work longevity you’ll have to keep working there through April 11, 2093.” – Keith Olbermann
Yes, I am quoting Keith Olbermann. On Ricochet. But sometimes even the worst man in the world has a valid point, one worth hearing. Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. This is one such time.
I am a historian as well as an engineer. History isn’t engineering. It is a lot messier. (That is saying a lot, by the way, but it is.) The stable influences are less visible than the unstable ones. For over seventy years Queen Elizabeth II was one of those rare stable influences.
She was also a connection with our past. She was the last head of state to have served in World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. She wore the uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service where she served as a mechanic and driver. (Yes, she was a gearhead. Loved driving all her life.) People now old enough to remember her today will alive at the start of the next century, and a direct link to World War II, over a century and a half in the past.
My father and father-in-law were both veterans of World War II. They both died in 2018, both in their 90s. More than that, my father-in-law was my direct link to the American Civil War. He was born during the Presidency of Warren Harding. He related stories of watching Civil War veterans pass by in Memorial Day and Armistice Day (as Veteran’s Day was then called) parades. The Spanish American War veterans and Great War veterans marched in those parades. The Civil War veterans rode in open-top motorcars. (Several of his great-uncles and grandparents also served in the Civil War, and related their experiences, which he passed on to me.)
In turn those Civil War veterans were his link to the American Revolution. As children, they in turn, met veterans of that conflict. (On both sides – a lot of those in the armies of our former foe in that war eventually moved to America.) That gave me an acquaintance at only two removes to the founders of this country.
The ties to our past eventually fray and break. We should cherish the ones that are still there for as long as we can. Rest well, Good Queen Bess.
Published in Group Writing
Interesting post, though I had never heard of this Elizabeth being referred to as Queen Bess. But, I never really paid that much attention to the Royals. Was this a familiar title used by her friends?
I note that two of President John Tyler’s (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862, POTUS 1841 to 1845) grandchildren are still with us today. Amazing.
Don’t know. Don’t care. Good Queen Bess was frequently used to describe her predecessor Queen Elizabeth I. ERII is as much a good queen as ERI referring to ERI as good Queen Bess and links the two queens, two of the three greatest monarchs England has ever had (the third being another queen, Victoria.)
Great post.
I love thinking about family in the context of history this way. Dad’s oldest siblings, Uncle Arthur and Aunt Mary (born in 1907 and 1909 respectively) had vivid memories of “Grandma Wells” who was born in 1818, three years after Waterloo and who died in 1915. Their mother (my grandmother, who was born in 1877) remembered Grandma Wells’s mother, who was born in 1791 and died in 1884. (Not for nothing did Mr. She refer to my family, on both sides, as The Dúnedain.)
So a woman who was alive in my lifetime, although she died when I was just an infant, had clear childhood memories of a lady who was born just three years after the US Constitution was ratified and adopted.
Here’s what just one of my family’s historians (Auntie Mary) had to say about this in the mid 1980s:
It’s an incredible gift to have these sorts of memories passed on. I can’t help thinking that an oft-overlooked ill-effect of today’s fractured families is the loss of this sort of perspective and context, both as it applies to a sense of “fitting in” for the people involved, and as an inability to think instinctively of life and time in an evolving and historical framework.
I ended up recording a lot of my father-in-law’s talks about family history. He would come over on Sundays for dinner. Then afterwards he would reminisce about family history. I began capturing those on MP3 recordings. My sons have copies.
My father and his sisters remembered their grandparents stories about the civil war. Amazing stuff.
With one exception, the only members of my extended family who are interested in family history are childless. Perhaps having children makes one look forward instead of back, but I’m not happy about that.
One civil war story: The people in my grandparent’s community were leary of the approach of troops, from either side. Their forefathers had told of soldiers “commandeering” whatever they wanted from the locals. People advised each other to bury their prized possessions.
One the the neighbors buried her down comforter.
I knew a local historian who as a child had watched Col. John S. Mosby (The Grey Ghost of Civil War Fame) get a hair cut. Mosby became a lawyer in Leesburg, Va (and also supported Grant for President)
I stayed once at an inn in Brighton, England which had a room with a sign saying it had been renovated in sixteen hundred and something.
These are all reminders of how young our country is.
My daughter recently asked if I would do that.
Do it. Your family will appreciate it.