Another reminder of time’s flight … The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, passed away this week at 111. Henry Allingham, who served in the British Navy and the RAF in WWI, died last week at 113. “The sole British survivor of the war is former seaman Claude Choules, who is aged 108 and lives in Perth, Australia,” the BBC reports.
As of today, there are three verified World War I veterans in the world, including the American doughboy Frank Buckles.
This makes me feel old. When I was little, there were millions of veterans of the Great War, most of them entering the early years of their retirement. (Wikipedia estimates that more than 2 million World War II veterans currently survive in the U.S. alone.) People born in the 19th century were elderly, but not impossibly so.
Am I the only one who feels like “the old days” have slid irretrievably into history, and that events I still consider “current” have taken their place? Are there other milestones that mark the passage of time for you?
Oh! And one Che Underground tangent: When I read “the last tommy,” it reminded me that Wallflowers/Morlocks guitarist Tommy Clarke is the last significant player from our little scene who’s still resolutely MIA. 🙂
(I was going to append this to the body of the post but had a last-minute attack of good taste.)
perhaps in poor taste but i do wish the RIAA would die.
The first time it happened was in the mid to late 80s, when I noticed cars made in the 50s had basically disappeared from the roads.
Lots of little moments since. Like sweetmeats disappearing from grocery stores and diner menus. The extinction of the once ubiquitous Country Squire station wagon.
The advent of specialized rock stations. I remember when the Everly Brothers, Janis Joplin, and Tony Orlando could all be heard on the same station.
In spring 1993 my turntable died and I realized I could no longer go to an ordinary department or electronic store to replace it.
The day I got the flu and turned on the TV after not watching for a long time- to find out sit-coms had gone the way of vinyl records.
I miss milk men.
and the brontosaurus
well actually the country squire was very much a brontasaurus……
sizewise at least. i loved mine as it made for a very cool work-truck and drove like a 707. and like a 707, it really took a minute to slow that thing to a stop.
i think our friend the bee is disappearing. that should be cause for concern.
I remember when these signs were all over the Paris Metro, reserving seats for war wounded from WWI:
My aunt’s friend’s mother died about 10 years ago … At 106 years old, she was maybe the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and a lifelong advocate for workplace safety.
I remember when Rose Kennedy died in 1994 at 104, the papers talked about how she’d charmed President McKinley as a girl.
When Jeanne Calment died in 1997 at 121, the press noted that she’d sold art supplies to Vincent van Gogh, who she remembered as “dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable.”
It’s kind of unnerving to me when the last of anything or anyone passes from the earth. It’s like a cord is severed … a final note is silenced.
>>i think our friend the bee is disappearing. that should be cause for concern.
And polar ice caps. Shit.
one OLD thing that still does exist is the spreckels organ at balboa park.
they still have free tuesday summer-concerts which can be quite a pleasant to take in. once a season they’ll get some joker on there and ruins the thing but it’s usually a nicely transcendental soak.
ooops….concerts are monday nights now.
http://www.sosorgan.com/
>It’s kind of unnerving to me when the last of anything or anyone passes from the earth. It’s like a cord is severed … a final note is silenced.
Yeah. It is a reminder to appreciate each unique moment as it passes.
I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum this weekend. It displays asteroids from the birth of the solar system that hold strings of amino acids. They may have been the seeds of the first life on Earth. God only knows how old. The universe expands and contracts, like God breathing. Inhaling and exhaling our essence, the stuff that distinguishes life from everything else. Who knows what ancient life blew up into the stardust that makes us. And where our dust will be eons from now when the sun has exploded into a red dwarf and the moon careens aimlessly past the Kuyper Belt.
So, when we mourn the passing of something- when the last Tommy goes, when the streets aren’t familiar, when you worry if the Earth has suffered an irretrievable loss, when the face in the mirror is too grey and wrinkled to be familiar, when a favorite pet dies or a close family member declines into Alzheimer’s, when a child grows up too fast and too far beyond your reach- maybe it’s one more cosmic breath. Nothing lasts long as you knew it. Or goes away completely. Your pulse and breath hold the hopes of someone long gone. The same stardust continuously swirls, explodes, dies and re-emerges, an endless beautiful mystery.
(above…nice.) i feel this is particularly important to remember when one begins to think their life has become stale, dull or pointless…..that there’s nothing happening to/with them but boredom. there can be long stretches of what may appear to be inactivity.
some planets move slower than others and some stars take longer to burn out but ultimately all things change.
the comings and goings of even the smallest creatures take on mystical importance once you understand how truly delicate
and pervasive this magic-show really is.
if you move around too quickly and feverishly you’re bound to miss much of the action there to be enjoyed.
>the comings and goings of even the smallest creatures take on mystical importance
especially those
I just realized that “The Last: Tommy” could be the headline of a Ramones retrospective.
World’s Oldest Person Dies in Los Angeles
Seventieth-anniversary reunion of “Wizard of Oz” munchkins.
oh ok, I thought this was a post about Tommy Clarke, the last Tommy. Anyway, now we found him, he was in WA.
Oldest person in US dies in NH at age 114
WESTMORELAND, N.H. – Mary Josephine Ray, the New Hampshire woman who was certified as the oldest person living in the United States, has died at age 114 years, 294 days.
She died Sunday at a nursing home in Westmoreland but was active until about two weeks before her death, her granddaughter Katherine Ray said.
“She just enjoyed life. She never thought of dying at all,” Katherine Ray said. “She was planning for her birthday party.”
Even with her recent decline, Ray managed an interview with a reporter last week, her granddaughter said.
The Gerontology Research Group says that Ray was the oldest person in the United States and the second-oldest in the world. She was also recorded as the oldest person ever to live in New Hampshire.
The oldest living American is now Neva Morris, of Ames, Iowa, at age 114 years, 216 days. The oldest person in the world is Japan’s Kama Chinen at age 114 years, 301 days.
Ray was born May 17, 1895, in Bloomfield, Prince Edward Island, Canada. She moved to the United States at age 3.
… And John Cale and Ornette Coleman are turning 70 and 80, respectively.
… We are running out of 19th century very fast now …
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne
Ohhhhhh … Speaking of Donne, this piece on Gen X midlife crises rings a bell. 🙂
This may very well be the last Armistice Day with surviving WWI vets. (There are three still accounted for.) Uhhh … Wow.
Tommy, can you see me?
Can I help to cheer you?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you feel me near you?
Oooh, Tommy,
Tommy, Tommy,
Tommy…
Last World War I combat vet dies in Australia
“SYDNEY – The last known combat veteran of World War I was defiant of the tolls of time, a centenarian who swam in the sea, twirled across dance floors, and published his first book at 108. He also refused to submit to his place in history, becoming a pacifist who wouldn’t march in parades commemorating wars like the one that made him famous.
“Claude Stanley Choules, a man of contradictions, humble spirit and wry humor, died in a Western Australia nursing home Thursday at age 110. … Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war’s last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans. Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, was a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Force.”
Florence Green, Last World War I Veteran, Dies at 110