Personal Narrative: My Grandpa John's Life

As I Easter came upon us, I knew my Grandpa John would be in town. My Grandpa John is 69 years old, and has experienced many different social issues during his life, so I decided to interview him. In his prime, my grandpa served in the military which allowed him to move often around the United States, and the world. I knew he had a lot of experience due to the military, and he was quite the storyteller. I knew it would be easy to talk to him about different social issues throughout his life. As we sat down we talked about many things, but the two ideas that really stuck out to me were the Vietnam War and the Space Race. The Vietnam War was the first social issue that we discussed on Easter. What I knew from school about the Vietnam War was that the war lasted almost 20 years! This was the
The Space Race was huge to society during his youth, and I thought it was awesome to hear about. It was really interesting to me that with little technology, countries were able to send men into space successfully. My grandpa was a teenager at this time so he couldn’t remember everything that happened, but he told me the important parts. When it came to the space race he told me, “when the Russians were first into space, it was a pretty big deal. Nobody in America liked them, so we had to do better. So we decided to go send our own guys into space to see if we could be better than the Russians.” He also told me that the Space Race was a massive rivalry that stood between the United States and the then- Soviet Union which lasted for many years. During recent times, NASA sent a space shuttle, Atlantis, containing people in 2010. The Atlantis space shuttle is the last shuttle that NASA’s program is going to send into space. Over the years, space travel has become more and more advanced. But NASA has went to more of a satellite-base program, which shows why they are going to stop sending humans into