Contents:
Germany in the Sixties Chapter Sixteen: Following European Politics Chapter Eighteen: Making a Home in Paris Chapter Nineteen: New Constellations Chapter Twenty: Lost Days Chapter Twenty-Six: Heidelberg Redux Chapter Twenty-Seven: The End of the Cold War Notes. Mary Lawlor's memoir, Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War , is terrifically written.
The experience of living in a military family is beautifully brought to life. This memoir shows the pressures on families in the sixties, the fears of the Cold War, and also the love that families had that helped them get through those times, with many ups and downs. By the time she graduated from high school, she had attended fourteen different schools. These displacements, plus her father?
As Mary came of age, tensions between the patriotic, Catholic culture of her upbringing and the values of the sixties counterculture set family life on fire. While attending the American College in Paris, she became involved in the famous student uprisings of May Years of turbulence followed.
Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War. The car was sold, bank accounts closed, and of course one school after another was left behind. Friends and later boyfriends lined up in memory as a series of temporary attachments. The book describes the dramas of this traveling household during the middle years of the Cold War. When the May riots broke out in the Latin quarter, she attached myself to the student leftists and American draft resisters who were throwing cobblestones at the French police.
Getting word of her activities via a Red Cross telegram delivered on the airfield in Da Nang, Vietnam, her father came to Paris to find her. The book narrates their dramatically contentious meeting and return to the American military community of Heidelberg. The book concludes many years later, as the Cold War came to a close. After decades of tension that made communication all but impossible, the author and her father reunited.
As the chill subsided in the world at large, so it did in the relationship between the pilot and his daughter. When he died a few years later, the hard edge between them, like the Cold War stand-off, had become a distant memory. Perhaps even fewer tell that story from the point of view of a military kid. There are plenty of histories and film documentaries of the time, and much fiction is set in the Cold War. I write on a stationary bicycle situated in a large, sunny room on the second floor of my house in Pennsylvania. My husband arranged a ledge on the handle bars of the bike, so I can set my laptop there.
I peddle and write at the same time. As an added benefit my metabolism is charging more than it would if I were sitting still at a desk. This, at least, is what I tell myself is happening! In Spain, I often take my computer up to the top of the mountain where my house is located.
The author doesn't hold back and really shows how it felt to be alive and young in those years, a time we don't often see written about from the eyes of a younger person. Overall, I was very impressed by this book and highly recommend reading it yourself, as it will really grab you and make you feel as though you knew her and what she lived through. Apr 08, Peggy rated it it was amazing. I have started really getting into these types of books. For me I get to read about other people's lives and different times. This is one of those books. The book is completely enjoyable and hard to put down once you start reading!
Jan 13, Gayle Pace rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is a memoir about the Lawlor family, Jack, Frannie and four daughters.
Army, was a typical Army family. Sometimes the parents were were a good influence and other times, not so good. Anyone who has been raised in a military family knows that you move a lot, friends are made and then left, you never stayed in one school very long and a life of strangers and strange places.
One daughter, Mary has grea This is a memoir about the Lawlor family, Jack, Frannie and four daughters. One daughter, Mary has great insightfulness about her family and how each of them had their own way of fitting in to the many different places and people they met during the years. This left the family on its own.
Lawlor tells the reader of the way their lives were changed by the Cold War and what little peace there was. The author tells of some of the stress that invaded her life. The many, some important, lessons that the family learned while under the strict and challenging situations they went through. Lawlor did a fabulous job of presenting the memoir of a daughter growing up in the U. Army in the sixties. She describes her Fighter pilot father, her mother, Frannie who held the family together when he was gone and kept the home fires burning.
The author writes about the one evil thing, Communism. It was there, although you couldn't see or feel it but it was hiding around the corner to jump out at any minute.
What will happen when it does? War is bound to happen. The book was very interesting.
The reader could place himself with the family. The book didn't read like a memoir. It was more like a reality check. So many varied emotions that the whole family constantly was going through. Lawlor, the author, must have experienced a lot of pain and mixed emotions through the years which I'm sure were somewhat worse in reality than written.
A wonderful insight into a young girl who grew up in a military family, the good and the bad, and how she dealt with it to become a talented author. No other compensation took place.
Dec 19, Clarissa rated it it was amazing Shelves: Lawlor is telling her story of growing up in a miltary home during the cold war. The threat of Russia and nuclear war were very real and would be for a long time. The sixties were a wild time and while Ms. Lawlor adopted those ideals, her traditionalist father and she struggle to connect.
She wrestled with the usual issues that even today we face, faith, family, politics, and what ideals to embrace as our own. This is a really strong and wonderful book that reads melodically. The pictures included were nice touches and I really enjoyed getting to know Ms. Lawlor and her family through her photos, her words, her thoughts and her feelings.
I particularly loved the passage that is shared above: Jan 20, Margaret Tidwell rated it it was ok. I received a free copy of this book from PUYB in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own. I always try and find good things about books that I am reading, and it is rare for me to just not like anything about books.
We never talked about any of this, so our house was often a tense, uneasy place and then an almost hysterically joyous one. Her experiences are illuminated by elegant research of the times that brings the adventures of her family into high relief. Every two or three years, Mary, her three sisters, and her mother packed up their household and moved. Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War , is terrifically written. Sometimes the parents were were a good influence and other times, not so good.
I found that I was bored throughout most of the book. I had a really hard time finishing this book because I was so bored with it.
I kept thinking while I was reading it was that it reminded me of a book that I would have read in high school. Oct 25, Katie Stafford added it. Lawlor tells her story of growing up in a military home during the cold war, individuation during the 60s, and personal wrestling with issues of family, faith, politics, and ideals. This is an important book because it gives a poignant perspective of the generation gap between the WWII generation and the baby-boomers. Well-written, I especially enjoyed the photographs, the descriptions of the 60s, and the powerful story of struggle and tension between family allegiances and personal ideals and v Lawlor tells her story of growing up in a military home during the cold war, individuation during the 60s, and personal wrestling with issues of family, faith, politics, and ideals.
Well-written, I especially enjoyed the photographs, the descriptions of the 60s, and the powerful story of struggle and tension between family allegiances and personal ideals and values. Nov 04, Scott Sherk rated it it was amazing. This book is a terrific read.