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another responsible adult has passed away...I grew up with his reportage from the White House.
And so that whole generation is almost completely gone - whether they be actors or actresses, newscasters, radio personalities, politicians, industrialists, union leaders, print reporters or gossip columnists, scientists, war heroes or pacifists (or both!), notable writers of fiction and of fact, sports personalities, and all the others who were mature individuals in the 1950's. They were the personalities who shaped me for better or worse and inevitably and inexorably, they are dwindling, leaving only my black and white memories of their presence on long-gone television shows where there are no kinescopes or even audio recordings.
One thing which amazes me daily is that despite the existing technology to have preserved many recordings of the eras, so much has been lost forever due to failed technology, budget cuts, or just plain carelessness and foolishness. I have distinct memories of occurrences which were on the radio or TeeVee which I cannot find and have never been referenced to my knowledge. One example is that of Les Crane, the interviewer, who had thousands of hours of remarkable interviews and yet only two kinescopes exist - for you youngsters, he was the first person who hosted an openly gay man on television - look him up on Wiki or wherever. This is just one permanent deletion out of thousands. I wonder if the same thing will happen even today with our 'advanced' technology: my feeling is that yes, there will be loss and even fewer will care about it.
I know that this has been true of every generation since time began, so to speak, but I can only imagine that those individuals who created and maintained archives during the early years of recording technology could not have imagined that we as a civilization would so carelessly discard so much.
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