I went to the facility after my lunch date with the 'Widder's Club' to say goodbye to the only two residents left from the 'old days' when I first started working there. Things change real fast at that place.

One was a dentist who is now in his mid 90's and was pretty spaced out even back then. The other was a retired attorney I had many an interesting talk with back in the day. He had been a '90 day wonder' and ended up the Captain of a sub-chaser in the 'Donald Duck Navy' during WW2, having never been on a boat before in his life. He told me he spent the whole war chasing subs and being sea sick and had not been on a boat since.

He went to law school later on and eventually worked as in attorney for JFK's administration and was heavily involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other things, and had some fascinating insights into JFK and his regime. He had a great scrapbook of photos of him and JFK and a bunch of other pols from that era. He then went on to a long career as a DC Beltway lawyer. His wife passed on and he had a stroke about eight years ago right before I started. It was a fairly minor one as strokes go, but he was no kid even then and needed care. He was still pretty sharp.

I had not seen him in awhile because he always seemed to be asleep when I came to the facility. I had heard he was failing. I went to his room Saturday. I don't know if he knew me or not. He was just speaking gibberish and looking at me with wild eyes. I brought up DC, Kennedy, the Cubans, sub-chasers, all the things that would have kicked off a round of interesting stories. Nothing. He was gone. Not even a trace left of the man I knew. That about wraps it up for a generation. That wraps it up for me too.....