Open Letter To The Generation Marching For Their Lives

As I was watching news coverage of the young people marching in our nation's capital this past weekend, the realization came to me that one of the speakers was only two years older than my oldest granddaughter. The thought came to me with such emotional intensity that I burst into tears. I still couldn’t talk about it without crying several days later when discussing my reaction with friends.

Yes, I thought though I am not related to any of the student organizers from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I am the right age to be their grandmother. Further contemplation, brought me to the belief that symbolically speaking I am (or should be) in that role for every person in that generation. Grandmother holds a very positive connotation for me because I idolized mine—I credit her with saving my emotional life. Without getting too personal, I know that freed from the day to day raising of her children she was perhaps more tolerant of me. That truth aside she was the one who taught me unconditional love and unquestioning support. In fact, growing up I couldn’t wait to be that grandmother to grandchildren of my own. However, our society is very different, and kids cannot stay close to home, they go where the jobs are and thus grandmothers are people one sees a couple of times a year unless forced to put up with us on SKYPE or FACETIME, but I digress. Today I write in hopes of resembling the grandmother I always wanted to be.

My heart went out to those students because of what they had been through, but for different reasons, my soul went to them as well. So I write this as an open letter to those who marched on our nation’s capital last weekend and to all in their generation. I only hope that someone in the great and powerfully connected LinkedIn will find a way to take the message to them.

 As children of the sixties, and for woefully inadequate reasons, you are the ones we’ve been waiting for—the ones who will finally insist on having your own music.  You are the first generation since mine to insist on visibility as a generation as a vehicle to bring attention to your shared experience and your heartfelt belief that some things just can’t be tolerated. You like us will seek to use that visibility to change your country and everything that follows. As a group you have already demonstrated your willingness to stand up for those beliefs against the generation in power, now mine, I note. I do not take that personally because I am, after all, your grandmother. Oh right, that is the reason I do have to take it personally.

To qualify, I'd first like to explain who we are and how we came to be waiting for you. You see we had drills in our schools to remind us what we should do in the event of a nuclear bomb attack. We believed that our school because we were taught to crawl under them, would surely preserve us from impending doom.

 On the other hand, you now have drills because your schools are no longer able to provide that same haven of protection, we believed the school could do for us. We were afraid in school because we thought the Russians might drop a bomb on us, but never that our teachers and administrators could not protect us from whatever might befall, even nuclear annihilation.  We just needed to follow all teacher instructions, hold hands and listen for the all-clear signal. It never occurred to us that a time would come when teachers and administrators would not be able to protect themselves, against this amorphous, poorly identified, much less predictable enemy.

Later we stood up for our beliefs by marching to end what we believed was an unjust war.  Even then, warfare for us was something that happened outside our own country. My heart and soul are yours because you do not have the luxury of believing that you are safe from wars waged against you until you, yourself, come of age. We wanted to protect our young men from waging war against their will through the draft; we were in our twenties, you are eleven.

We were solidified as a generation as we watched while war was waged in living technicolor, as our fellow students took over campus administration buildings, and in horror when the first shots rang out against us all as the students at Kent State Fell. I participated in sit-in’s, and marches as a responsible young citizen of the sixties did. However, I am quite sure that at the time none of us ever expected to be anyone’s grandmother (or father). That fact of life ignored and acknowledged, I must say, I am very proud to be yours. Proud yes but profoundly sad that you, while still so young, have been so gravely wounded as a generation that you have already found it necessary to take to the streets of our capital. I say our capital because you have claimed it and for that, we should all be grateful. A country it has been reported no longer able to protect its citizens and arguably coming apart at the seams, should not be chastising you for missing school. Instead, we might consider being extraordinarily thankful that you still have faith enough in our system to try to change what’s not working. Any of us who have in any way fought for the principles that made us a nation should now be engaged in helping you try to set it right.

Many of my generation and the ones between yours and mine have marched with you to show our individual support---I invite you now to accept your birthright, call upon us as the entire generation of your grandparents to remember, to care, to offer a helping hand or a safety net from any who would stand against you.

As your grandmother, let me also provide this reassurance, try as they might they will not be able to un-change you. My experience allows me to promise that at age 70 you will be every bit as willing to offer whatever it takes, whenever it is needed to help those who will fight injustice, who will stand up for their fellows, who will care as you do now. 

Children of the sixties, whether your own grandchildren marched, or spoke or watched on TV, they are all ours— we have waited for them to appear, perhaps knowing that we ourselves had failed to create that peaceful, safe, just country we had cared so passionately about.  I now stand confident that we cannot be unchanged either. I believe that most of us will answer the call if only we would remember they have reaped what we never, ever intended to sow. They are all our precious grandchildren, and we thought their world would be a better place than ours.  Who of us will not weep because after all this time it did not turn out that way?  The world, the country we dreamed about is not the one into which they have been born.  Show these precious young ones that we are not those grandparents who will only weep and wring our hands. Now you children of the sixties, it is time to rise again and help them do for themselves what we could not do for them.

Sincerely,

Bonnie H. Howell, Child of the 60’s

Grandmother of Anika and Eva

Moreover, one whose heart breaks over what children only a little older than they have had to endure, one I trust who like you are not too old to remember or care.