Читать книгу LIVING THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS - Donald E. Wilson - Страница 5

Just nineteen days following Roosevelt’s inauguration on October 5^th Alleen’s father was born in the Portland section of Louisville Kentucky. Nine months later on July 7, 1902, my father entered the world in the mountain town of Pineville Kentucky; two men from distinctly different environments destined to take their places among Kentucky’s true giants, and legends.

Even before we were born our father’s witnessed, not only the many uses of electricity, but mankind’s first successful flight in a gasoline powered lighter than air craft, Henry Ford’s first Model T Ford, Einstein’s “Theory of Relatively,” and the first silent movies, followed closely by talkies and many other marvels of American ingenuity. The country was on the verge literally of becoming the greatest scientific and industrial power in the world.

Our father’s also witnessed the vast changes in our day to day culture that fostered prohibition, speak easies, short skirts, and a vast new genre in music called jazz, that by mid-century was in itself a cultural revolution. And perhaps in one of the most dramatic changes to impact the American people they witnessed the unprecedented shrinkage of the world. The westward expansion of the past century was a thing of the past as the horse gave way to the automobile, leading to travel from shore to shore. By mid-century the airplane made the entire world accessible, and our dads would live to see the first man travel in space. Such scientific marvels as television and transatlantic communications added to that shrinking world. No nation in history could come close to matching the progress the United States made in their life time.

While Charlie and Jim were very much alike in character, determination to succeed, love of country, love of families, and most significantly love of God, their early lives were poles apart.

First, in the foothills of Appalachia was my father, Charles P. Wilson.