Sunday, February 14, 2016
She is the last of an amazing generation in our Wright family. It is this generation who grew up at the end of The Great War, experienced the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the Second World War and Korea, Vietnam and onwards. They saw the invention of electronics and the transistor and the heretofore incredible things that evolved from that. The phenomenal advances in medicine and internationalisation and travel. They’re the ones who made all these things happen. The rate of change that their generation caused in society has been unsurpassed and likely will remain so. This generation walked to school as had untold generations prior. But then this generation walked on the moon, walked on the top of the world at Mount Everest and walked on the floor of the ocean. They did it all. We must be in absolute awe of their achievements. Polio and leprosy and others are all but annihilated. The United Nations and jet airlines are their constructs, as are farms in the desert, trebling of chemistry’s elements, the Hubble Telescope, automobiles and bicycles for all, the end of the world’s great empires, and, hugely, both education and the vote for women, blacks, aboriginals and gays. They are the first to grow up with radio and telephone, but upped the game immensely by inventing television, the computer, and mobile telephony which grew into the ubiquitous smartphone and computer games and massive worldwide ability to respond to major natural disasters anywhere in the world. Sadly about the only things they couldn’t leave as their legacy is the end to war, corruption and cancer. They seem to have solved almost everything else. Did Esther Wright do all these things alone? No. But her peers did and she was part of this tapestry: her perseverance, courage, progressive attitude, grace and good humour allowed her to survive early widowhood, run and build a productive farm, raise four children who have all performed in salutary fashion and are all making their own mark on family, society and the economy. She with her plate more than full went back to school as a single working mother of four, successfully running a large farm that grew into three, and certified as a teacher and taught for a full career on top of everything else. What a remarkable woman. Aunt Esther: God Bless you!
