Reflection On An Interview With A Baby Boomer

Recently I discovered a new love for speaking to and learning about the lives and opinions of other people. I had been involving myself in more quality conversations with anyone from teachers to relatives, and each discussion left me wanting to replicate it with as many people as possible, but how would I incorporate this love into something useful? Fortunately, this discovery tied perfectly to an option on the list of ideas for my History 104 final project. For this reason, I chose to interview a baby-boomer, my aunt Dellilah Johnson, for a portion of my project.
Before I began the interview, I sat and talked with Dellilah for a short while as we settled down; I wanted to make her feel comfortable to ensure the most genuine answers possible. …show more content…
I first brought up the moon landings; Dellilah had fond memories of these. She told me how her mother would make fresh bread and sit her children down in front of the TV to watch the rockets take off. Hearing this made me smile and wish I could have experienced that with her. However, contrary to the previous, the following questions produced more serious and profound responses and made me think about how my life would be if I lived in situations similar to those I mentioned before. For instance, when asked Dellilah how she felt about the Cold War, the first thing she said was, "Fear," and she expressed her worry of a missile possibly coming. Another example of these significant topics was the Vietnam War; Dellilah 's cousin Tony Beekler fought in Vietnam, and Dellilah told me how rough he said being a soldier was; he and his fellow soldiers had to disguise themselves as civilians just to get off their planes without being attacked by protesters. Hearing this, I wondered what modern soldiers would do if they had to do what Tony did, and I wondered if there would ever be protests like that in the United States again. This more serious discussion with Dellilah made me speculate the similarities and differences in attitudes towards momentous events then and attitudes towards them now, and I wondered how people …show more content…
I was excited and slightly hesitant when asking these, for I had never had a conversation with Dellilah in which we spoke of such weighty topics. To begin, the biggest change she had seen over the course of her life she so eloquently stated as being, “It used to be more black and white… anything goes now;” this response did not surprise me. After she answered, we discussed how when she was my age, people would not ever express themselves as much as they do now because some ideas like same-sex marriage were unheard of and hard to accept. Hearing this account first-hand made me realize how far society has indeed come since the baby-boomer era, and only increased my longing to experience life in different eras. After conversing that for a while longer, I asked Dellilah the final and hardest-hitting question of the interview: her opinion of the baby-boomer generation as a whole. Knowing she is a baby-boomer herself, I knew her response would be in favor of her generation, but I was curious to see her reasoning behind it. Her strongest reason in support of the baby-boomers was because the “change that came after [this generation] gave women the opportunity to do things.” This answer delighted me, as I, too, am passionate about equality. On the other hand, I asked Dellilah why others may have the opposite opinion, and she said, “Bigger and better became the way to be…