Born: October 28, 1917, Morris County, New Jersey
Died: July 16, 2012, Morris County, New Jersey
Relation to Author: Grandfather
Today marks the 84 year anniversary of Black Tuesday - the day the stock market lost the most value and signaling the beginning of the Great Depression. Half of my ancestors were in upstate New York working as dairy farmers. The other half were in New Jersey. My grandfather (aka PopPop aka Bruce Cheney) often talked about the depression. This quote from a Daily Record article in 2000 is similar to what I often remember him saying to us:
“We had a great generation,” Bruce Cheney said. “We went through the Depression. My mom and dad never had a car, but we didn’t know we were poor. We didn’t have much, but we had pride."He often talked about how his parents never talked about the depression and often hid from him how hard those times were. Black Tuesday was the day after Bruce's 12th birthday, so he spent his teens in the great depression and his early adulthood was spend in World War II.
As you might guess from the quote, Bruce was a fan of Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation (which had been a gift from my brother if I remember right).
