The Long Generation

We spend a lot of time as Americans thinking about generations — which one we’re from and what that means for us.

But as thoughtful people have been pointing out for hundreds of years, comparisons are odious.

We can’t live up to or down from a previous generation because the challenges, the circumstances, the tools and the opportunities aren’t the same. Neither are the people.

The boomers. The Greatest. The Silent. The Lost. Gen. X, Millennials, Gen. Y, Gen. Z, Gen. Alpha.

All are American, on a planet that keeps spinning.

Every one of those generations births stellar humans who could meet the challenges of any other generation. So let me call those people the Long Generation, one not restricted by time or mortality, but defined by actions.

We’re born into a circle of sorts, every one of us surrounded by those with whom we’ll spend portions of our lives. People can enter or leave almost unnoticed if we aren’t paying attention, all of them contributing to our experience on the planet.

Kent Coyle and his granddaughter Kabry Stowden. COURTESY PHOTO

That’s how it is, and it’s trans-generational.

Baby boomers, the subject of this week’s lead story, started at 76 million born in the United States between 1945 and 1964. Now, about 2.7 million are dying each year, and that number will increase significantly in short order. This year, there are roughly 54.7 million senior citizens living in the country age 65 or older, more than 4.8 million of those in Florida.

Numbering among them, as always, are members of the Long Generation — individuals of compassion and courage, of wit and wisdom and generosity, of skill and modesty.

Often unseen, they weave strength and beauty into the tapestry of our lives simply by their conduct in day-to-day living. That’s a singular trait of the Long Generation.

I was unhappily reminded of this again last week when one of them, a friend named Kent Coyle, stepped suddenly out of the world at the age of 77 without my permission, or that of his family and friends.

What made him what he was?

An exceptionally skilled carpenter, Kent was born on Oct. 13, 1946, in Columbia City, Indiana, among the first of the boomers.

He was an Army veteran, and — having finally got it right the third time around when he married his wife of 40 years, Karen Coyle — a family man who did more than wear that tag as a label.

They shared six living children, not to mention the regular company of three grandchildren from their youngest daughter Kalee, and her husband Danny Stowden.

Those kids — Kadan, Conner and little Kabry — will likely plunge into the 22nd century more than 75 years from now carrying their grandfather with them.

In the years I knew Kent, he’d finish work at the end of the day and navigate straight home to help Karen take care of them. He did this, not by just sitting in a chair with a beer and nodding politely in their direction. He’d given up drinking years earlier, for one thing,

Instead, tired or not, he got down on the floor and played with the children.

I met Kent when I walked into the real estate office of another Long Generation soul, the late Jim Green, and asked if he knew any good carpenters.

And so it began, my latest in a series of courses on how to live right. Over the next eight or nine years Kent built a couple of decks, refinished bathrooms and did various smaller jobs for which we needed practiced skill. Last Christmas, he built a 10-guitar stand for my youngest son.

It always went like this: Kent’s white Chevy van, running with 357,000 miles and a fading bumper sticker that said “Old Guys Rule,” would coast into my yard under the ancient oaks, and go silent. A minute would pass before a man just under 6 feet, weighing about 130 pounds, would unfold from his shop on wheels and glance my way, his entire life etched into the map on his face — the canyons, gullies, ravines and arroyos of experience both happy and sad, all of it lit by a slate-blue gaze that carried both mirth and melancholy, along with a ton of get-downand do-it skill and knowledge.

With the tools and equipment he’d organized stem to stern in that van, he could build or fix anything.

He was scrupulously honest.

He was practical and inventive and tough — even in his 70s he could work hard, all day, in heat, damp or bugs, without ever a complaint.

He was a boomer, sure. But those are qualities of the Long Generation, too.

Kent often brought artifacts he’d found on jobs or at garage sales all over the country. He had an eye for iconic American moments, too, once pointing me to a couple of yellowed, front-page newspaper articles he’d preserved.

In one, the great pitcher LeRoy (Satchel) Paige had called for a strike by players on his team, the Kansas City Monarchs, in the 12th annual negro East-West baseball classic before 46,247 fans at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

Unless.

Unless 100% of the game’s proceeds went to war relief.

Satchel Paige, like Jim Green and Kent Coyle after him, must also have been a member of the Long Generation.

Jim Green’s newspaper obituary six years ago ended with a recommendation for those wishing to make donations, but that was followed with one last sentence.

It might as well be Kent Coyle’s, too, or any member of the Long Generation’s: “Better yet,” it read, “those who wish to honor Jim (or Kent) could do so by helping others, and being kind to strangers.”

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