Memories of the Cold War
May 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Topic: Memories of the Cold War, Timeline of the Cold War and How it Impacted Our Lives
Guest Speaker: James Shroads
The Amelia Island Genealogical Society will hold its regular monthly meeting at 7pm on the 3rd Tuesday, (May 19, 2026), in the community room at the Fernandina Branch Library. The public is invited to join us!
Among scholars of history, the Cold War is emerging as the defining period of the Twentieth Century.
Consider:
It started with a bang and ended with the political implosion of a major world power; It is the period in which the thinking human minds of governing authority – human minds whose analytical capacities are essentially unchanged since the time of the Greek philosophers – are forced to comprehend an unprecedented leap in the technology of warfare, a leap that potentially threatens the continued existence of civilized life. With whatever skills and limitations we might possess as humans, how do we formulate and implement policies to deal with the potential of nuclear warfare? And, how are those policies implemented, what works, and what doesn’t?
It is the period in which governmental funding of defense-related research directly or indirectly accounts for the greatest widespread advances in technology, in absolute scale and scope, of any period of human history to date.
And we were part of it.
As genealogists we place our ancestors into their historical context to understand them and their lives. For our heirs who will someday try to understand us within the historical context of our lives, we should leave a legacy explaining what it was like living through the Cold War period. What was it like, what did it mean for us, for our friends and family, for our country, for the human beings who inhabit this planet. Where were we during the Cold War period, what did we witness, how did we feel, what did we do? Our successors ought to know and try to understand this pivotal time because they will live in the aftermath. It’s genealogy and history on a forward-looking level. It’s the story that we tell, and the story we will leave behind.
The program will recount the Cold War period and suggest a timeline-based framework upon which personal memories can be added. Whatever we did, we were part of the Cold War as it defined our time on this planet, so use it as the contextual outline upon which you can add and explain your own history.