by Don Keelan

Recently, there has been a great deal of news regarding the selection of Robert F. Prevost from Chicago, the first American to lead the Roman Catholic Church, as Pope Leo XIV. Understandably, much has been made of it being a “first.” This got me thinking about all the “firsts” I have witnessed during my four-score and five years of hanging around.

As for “first” in the U.S. presidential arena, a wheelchair-bound FDR was elected to a fourth term in 1944 and was succeeded in 1945 by a president who never went to college, President Truman. Tragically, there would be other “firsts.” In the following 25 years, I witnessed a president being assassinated, another resign, followed by Gerald Ford, the first president to serve without being elected to the Office. 

More “firsts” were to come—two presidents were impeached (Clinton and Trump), and in between, a father and son would hold the Office, some 20 years apart. 

The most significant presidential first, of course, was the election of the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama. During this time period, women broke down barriers in their attempts to win the Oval Office, with Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine A. Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris leading the way.

In 1981, another first occurred in Washington when Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed as the first female Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States (USSC).   

Up on another hill and halfway around the world, in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay achieved what no one had ever done—they planted a flag at the summit of Mt. Everest. Another first in athletic achievements occurred in 1954, when Roger Bannister became the first to break the four-minute mile run.

In mentioning running, who would ever have thought that, in the 1940s, an African American would become a Major League Baseball player? In 1947, Jackie Robinson, #42, did just that as a second baseman for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers.

Unfortunately, it took another 20 years before major leagues and college sports teams in the South allowed mixed teams of white and Black individuals to participate in public events. Today, we have Black quarterbacks and coaches operating at colleges that once had their state governors blocking college entrance for Black students.  

What is no longer evident on the corner of every big city street? A public phone booth or a U.S. Postal mailbox. FedEx, UPS, and email arrived as the former went to the trash heap. A small handheld gadget, the cell phone, appeared on the scene some 30 years ago and has changed lives for nearly all of us, at least 99.9% of us.

The “firsts” in science and medicine over the past 85 years have been without precedent. Nuclear fission, jet aircraft, space travel, including the first human to walk on the moon, and iPads, laptops, super-computers are today common appliances throughout the world.

Interestingly, TV was an invention that preceded me in the 1930s, and was put on hold until WWII was behind us. 

My WWII-era generation has seen the worldwide conquering of polio, malaria, measles, smallpox, and other crippling diseases. And there will be other “firsts” when cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes are also conquered.     

If all the above was not enough “firsts,” now comes along a tech company, Waymo. It did not exist twenty years ago, nor did its driverless cars. Its operations have dominated the cars-for-hire market in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, with millions of riders calling for a driverless car. Atlanta, Boston, Austin, and Europe are next on the company’s wish list.

My two dozen books summarizing what Encyclopedia Britannica has documented for generations, along with my collection of National Geographic maps, I have been informed by my kids and grands, are passé—the Internet and AI are where things are today. 

There have been so many more “firsts” during my lifetime, and undoubtedly there will be many more to come. However, there is one that I had always hoped for, but to no avail, over the past 40 years. Will the Town of Arlington ever develop a wastewater system that can replace the failing septic systems that now exist? What a “first” this would be.

The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.