# The 1950s are becoming a "dead mans decade"



## CaboBayCaptain1297 (Mar 19, 2016)

The '50s are often regarded as "the first modern decade". It was the first full decade after World War II, the first decade in which television became a staple within American homes, and it was the first decade of youth culture and counter culture, with rock and roll, drive-ins, Beatniks and what have you.
You've probably seen a lot of movies from the '80s that capitalized on '50s nostalgia, such as Back To The Future and La Bomba. 

Yeah... well, guess what, the beginning of that very decade is now nearing 70 years old. 
The '50s is now a decade that was mostly experienced by people whom now are either very elderly or dead. 

Those born in the '40s, whom would've mostly been little kids in the '50s, are currently the oldest active generation alive today, but even they are well passed retirement age by now.
Those born in the '30s, whom would've mostly been teenagers in the '50s, are now in their 80s and becoming increasingly frail, not only that, but those born in the very early '30s are now nearing 90, meaning if they're alive today, they're not going to be for much longer.
Those born in the '20s, whom would've been in their 20s-30s in the '50s, are now quickly dying off, there's only around 500,000 living World War II vets alive today, and they're all at the age where they're anticipating death at any day.

Not only that, but those born in the Late 19th Century were still an active generation in the '50s, you had actors in '50s TV Shows whom were born in the 1880s and 1890s, in fact the president throughout most of the '50s was Dwight Eisenhower, whom was born in 1890.
Today, everyone born in the 19th Century is dead and gone.

What's your input on this?


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## 7teen4ever (Oct 26, 2017)

My great grandmother born in 1915 and died in 2013.


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## karioprkaj (Jan 27, 2018)

I agree with this post. I guess you can state the same for the 60s as well. Its crazy to see how old we're getting.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

karioprkaj said:


> I agree with this post. I guess you can state the same for the 60s as well. Its crazy to see how old we're getting.


Impressively old. But... some people do great things when they are old. Grandma Moses started painting at the age of 75. She continued to paint until she died at the age of 101. 
Bill Traylor was a former slave, who started painting at the age of 83.
Harry Bernstein published his first novel at the age of 96. It was called "The Invisible Wall."
Oscar Swahn was a Swedish shooter who won a gold medal in the 1912 Olympics at the age of 64. The last Olympics that he competed in was in 1920. He won silver at the age of 72. He was the oldest Olympian and the oldest medalist.
And, in my own personal life... I have a friend who is 94 years old. She is a retired art teacher. She is still an active weaver, who shows her work in a variety of places. She also draws and paints, as she has done since she was a small child during the Great Depression.


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## Preciselyd (Mar 18, 2018)

SlyCooper97 said:


> The '50s are often regarded as "the first modern decade". It was the first full decade after World War II, the first decade in which television became a staple within American homes, and it was the first decade of youth culture and counter culture, with rock and roll, drive-ins, Beatniks and what have you.
> You've probably seen a lot of movies from the '80s that capitalized on '50s nostalgia, such as Back To The Future and La Bomba.
> 
> Yeah... well, guess what, the beginning of that very decade is now nearing 70 years old.
> ...


A lot of great people, many on this forum, many on our screens, legends were born in the 50s. A great decade that has given us a lot back and continues even to this day. I agree with your post @SlyCooper97.

1950
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1950.html

1951
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1951.html

1952
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1952.html

1953
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1953.html

1954
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1954.html

1955
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1955.html

1956
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1956.html

1957
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1957.html

1958
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1958.html

1959
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1959.html

This is to name a few, the 50s gives much more.


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

Hey them old farts lived long lives despite being exposed to lead fumes from leaded gas, seeing the ozone layer almost be depleted, or probably having someone in their neighborhood buy radioactive earrings from nuclear weapons test sites, or had a kid who played with volatile, chemicals, or radioactive toys.


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## Blazkovitz (Mar 16, 2014)

For me, the first modern decade are the 1960s. Miniskirts, rock music and space flight all started in the 1960s.


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## Clare_Bare (Apr 6, 2015)

CaboBayCaptain1297 said:


> Yeah... well, guess what, the beginning of that very decade is now nearing 70 years old.
> The '50s is now a decade that was mostly experienced by people whom now are either very elderly or dead.


I remember the 60's (which began nearly sixty years ago) and I ain't elderly or dead!



CaboBayCaptain1297 said:


> ... and they're all at the age where they're anticipating death at any day.


Says a millennial ...
Wait until you are reflecting about the decade you were born in and thinking it was three quarters of a Century ago!
Oh wait - who says you are going to live that long anyways?



CaboBayCaptain1297 said:


> Today, everyone born in the 19th Century is dead and gone.


False!

Nabi Tajima
Japan
Born 4 August 1900


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## SharksFan99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Clare_Bare said:


> Says a millennial ...
> Wait until you are reflecting about the decade you were born in and thinking it was three quarters of a Century ago!
> Oh wait - who says you are going to live that long anyways?




- "Who says you are going to live that long anyways?". 

Gee, you must have too much time on your hands, if you're resorting to personally insulting a random person who is decades younger than you. Insulting someone doesn't make you a bigger person; it only makes you childish. You said that you're not elderly. Well, maybe you should learn to accept your age, grow the hell up and stop degrading people younger than yourself.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

My grandpa, who born in 1942 has been living his last 30 or 40 years with arrhythmias. In his last years he was still a troll to some extent. He died at 2018-01-04. Just after fun days... Anyway I know that in his adult days he was offered to become a painter, but he didn't wan to. His talent has survived lots of decades. When I was small (5-7 year old) he showed it to me. Up until his death he was been doing crosswords almost daily. He literally was mostly slowed down by how fast every single crossword book was refreshed in stores. It looks like a miracle to me that he survived so long with hearth disease. He even was in hospital like 7 seven times, due to being near death.

To stay on topic, I can say that all other grandparents that I have are either from 40s or 50s. They are still alive and don't really look like they can die any day. In Lithuania there are lots of people from 40s, 50s. Totally not dead man's decade. Dead man's decade is 30s, they aren't hard to find, but they are dying quite often. Also due to my relatives being Lithuanians, they probably don't know anything about American culture of that time. Mostly due to Soviet occupation, banishing to Siberia. That grandpa, who is dead right now, when he was small, his house was burned down by nazis. When he was kid, he had some experience with guns. He knew about terrible situation, yet still had more or less normal childhood. He even was educated and had some jobs. I remember, he told me that he was a bus driver, later private driver, who drove some kolkhoz leaders with Volga. Volga was then a luxury car, which was very hard to get for normal people. He himself had Lada at similar time. Still for lots of years culture has remained very behind the time. It was normal for people to live with grandparents. It was normal for people to have their own land and work agriculture works. His own mom survived up until 2001 and even saw me. Once she called me "little angel", yet my grandparents thought differently. That great-grandparent of mine was a big influence on passing even earlier culture, yet many people lived like she did, so maybe not a big impact. My grandparents still grew animals privately. Cow, some pigs and some chickens and from what I know up until late 90s or maybe even early 00s. Later they switched to only growing vegetables and fruits (I didn't mention garden). I worked with plants myself up until this moment, but in grandpas lat year he wanted to grow less and less. Now after his death I don't know if grandma alone is going to at least grow 50% of everything. Such worker culture is mostly from 20s (actually from 1500s, because it's not too different), yet remained up until 10s. Most culture stuff here is 30 years behind. Things mentioned by OP became more mainstream in:
Television - 70s
Rock and Roll - never became truly mainstream, but most success it had was in late 80s or early 90s
Drive ins - late 2000s and early 2010s
Counter culture - late 80s, mostly due to Perestroika
Beatniks - never really was a big thing, closest to that are early 90s
Back to the Future - never was popular, most success is likely in the 90s
La Bomba - never was popular and I never heard of that

So yeah, Lithuanian culture was very different from American one and people alive here are different from American people. Now I experience a big mixture of cultures. Lots of things are old, some are from 90s, yet the youngest ones are culturally close to Muricans. It's a mess to be honest, but it seems like the most modern culture is going to dominate soon. When I was a kid, I mostly experienced 70s-90s culture, despite living in 00s. In 00s I had NES clone to play games, yet there was a PC at home since 2005. 56k internet was there up until early 10s. WiFi only appeared here in 2011, yet I almost didn't have any device that I could connect to it. My early life clothes looked like from American 80s. Many things were some decades behind, but less and less are still behind. I sorta miss that mixture of random cultures. Must have been some fun times.


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## Clare_Bare (Apr 6, 2015)

SharksFan99 said:


> - "Who says you are going to live that long anyways?".
> 
> Gee, you must have too much time on your hands, if you're resorting to personally insulting a random person who is decades younger than you. Insulting someone doesn't make you a bigger person; it only makes you childish. You said that you're not elderly. Well, maybe you should learn to accept your age, grow the hell up and stop degrading people younger than yourself.


It was a legitimate question.
Do *you* have a guarantee that you will live to age 21?
Cancer, car wreck, drowning - not going to happen to you?

What about you? Got anything of substance to contribute?
What? No life experience?
It's not criticism - it's fact.

I'm reasonably certain my life experiences of nearly four decades as an adult are sufficient to justify my comments.


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## SharksFan99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Clare_Bare said:


> It was a legitimate question.
> Do *you* have a guarantee that you will live to age 21?
> Cancer, car wreck, drowning - not going to happen to you?
> 
> ...


Yeah, well, by singling him out for being a Millennial and saying "oh wait...who says you are going to live that long anyway?", it didn't come across that way at all. I think you intended to belittle him, but if you want to say otherwise, you can pretend that you had no bad intentions (even if it seemingly isn't so). 

Besides, what does any of this even have to do with the purpose of this thread anyway? I really don't care that you have life experience or whether I will live to a certain age. This thread is based on the 1950s becoming a "dead mans" decade, not whether someone is guaranteed to live to the age of 21.


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## OldAlaskan (Jan 16, 2017)

According to national statistics, only about 23% of people born in the U.S. in 1950 have passed away. Many of us (I was born in 1950) are still very active in employment, politics, active recreation, sex, and creativity. On the other hand, many of us also feel pretty dead inside due to the way that life has a way of beating a person down by the trauma of wars, painfully ended relationships, being victimized financially, physically, socially, etc., by cruel or predatory people, debilitating medical issues, overwhelmed by multiple, complicated grief and losses, crushed dreams and lifetime investments, etc, etc. Don't count us out yet. In many ways we are still running our society, politically and economically. And I resent being called "elderly"


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## OldAlaskan (Jan 16, 2017)

My favorite blocks as a kid were painted in lead based paint. I used to play with murcury that I collected from old thermometers. I made all kinds of stuff out of lead that I stole from my dad's storage, which he used to make his own bullets. I was "playing" with a 22 rifle by the time I was 12. Survived the Vietnam horror, and have survived 47 years of married life with the same woman. And in the last year (at age 67) I've just rebuilt my 1974 Suzuki dirt bike and my 1980 Honda Gold Wing. Yes, we have seen a lot.


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## angelfish (Feb 17, 2011)

Nah, too soon. Re-post in 20 years.


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## CaboBayCaptain1297 (Mar 19, 2016)

OldAlaskan said:


> According to national statistics, only about 23% of people born in the U.S. in 1950 have passed away. Many of us (I was born in 1950) are still very active in employment, politics, active recreation, sex, and creativity. On the other hand, many of us also feel pretty dead inside due to the way that life has a way of beating a person down by the trauma of wars, painfully ended relationships, being victimized financially, physically, socially, etc., by cruel or predatory people, debilitating medical issues, overwhelmed by multiple, complicated grief and losses, crushed dreams and lifetime investments, etc, etc. Don't count us out yet. In many ways we are still running our society, politically and economically. And I resent being called "elderly"


My post wasn't about people who were born in the '50s, but rather those that experienced the '50s as teens or adults.
Those born in the '40s and '50s who experienced the '50s as children are definitely still around in large quantities.
However, those born in the '30s who experienced the '50s as teenagers are now for the most part in their eighties now, meaning they're becoming increasingly frail, and passed life expectancy age by now. Those born in the '20s, who experienced the '50s as a twenty/thirty-something, are now quickly dying off.

That's what my post meant. It wasn't about those born in the '50s, but rather those that experienced it from a mature point of view.


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## Hollie Beth (Apr 15, 2018)

CaboBayCaptain1297 said:


> Those born in the '20s, whom would've been in their 20s-30s in the '50s, are now quickly dying off, there's only around 500,000 living World War II vets alive today, and they're all at the age where they're anticipating death at any day.
> 
> What's your input on this?


Indeed. My maternal grandma, or Ma as we all called her, was born 1926, and passed away July of last year. Seeing her as a statistic is a bit jolting, as I never viewed her leaving us as "Just another old person from the 1920s dying. It was bound to happen."

But my Great-uncle Frank, her only surviving sibling, is still alive. He fought in WWII. 

Also, RIP Gunnery Sgt. R. Lee Ermey, 1944-2018. Thank you, Sir. You will never be forgotten.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

dulcinea said:


> Hey them old farts lived long lives despite being exposed to lead fumes from leaded gas, seeing the ozone layer almost be depleted, or probably having someone in their neighborhood buy radioactive earrings from nuclear weapons test sites, or had a kid who played with volatile, chemicals, or radioactive toys.


radioactive earrings...:wrecking_ball_viza_


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## SilentScream (Mar 31, 2011)

Well this is morbid. My dad was born in 45 and he is certainly at the age where I constantly worry about him. He's already buried 4 of his own siblings.


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## pwowq (Aug 7, 2016)

People die. What is the deal?

This is how unique death is today:


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