Exhibit Of “America’s Greatest Generation” Opens Kansas Day

Fri, January 27, 2012

Click Image to Enlarge

KMUW / Briana O’Higgins

The Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum will kick off their new exhibit Jan. 29 with a culminating event for Kansas’ 150th year of statehood.

The museum says their annual Kansas Day celebration marks a new point in history as the state moves past its 150th birthday. The event will feature historian and WSU Associate Professor of History Dr. Jay Price.

He will be speaking on relationships to the past, specifically on the lives of “America’s greatest generation,” a term he says was popularized in the 1990s to describe the men and women who came of age during the Depression and World War II.

“When we hit the 50th anniversery of WWII, there is a lot of nostalgia about the war,” says Price. “The generation that served in that war was starting to age and pass away in larger and larger numbers, and I think there is an element of the Baby Boom coming to terms with who their parents were.”

Price’s Kansas Day talk coincides with the local opening of “Our Lives, Our Stories,” an exhibition launched by the Minnesota Historical Society to honor America’s greatest generation.

“I want people to come away thinking about what is their place in American history,” says Price. “How do they fit in? It is easy to think about history in the Star Wars analogy, long ago in a galaxy far far away. In fact, it is very personal. This is Dad, Mom, Grandma, Grandpa.”

Price will speak Sunday afternoon at 2pm at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.

The exhibit “Our Lives, Our Stories: America’s Greatest Generation” runs through March 16th.