Today, March 6, 2022, would have been my mom’s 100th birthday.

She died way too young at the age of 69, a victim of a lifetime of smoking, which was considered not only normal but healthy in the 1940s and beyond.

Figure 1 – Typical 1940s cigarette ad. Smoking was heavily promoted by the tobacco industry and even the U.S. Government in the 1940s

In the photo below, my mother is 19 years old, visiting her uncle in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor in the summer of 1941, where he was the ranking medical officer in Hawaii. See On the 80th Anniversary, Family Memories of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 2021.

Figure 2 - Cecilia King at age 19 in 1941, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

She and my dad married on April 25, 1942, when he was already in the Army. They were of the Greatest Generation, and my dad spent 1944-45 in the Army in Europe.

My mom raised three sons and then went back to college, completing her college work in Library Science. She worked as a librarian for many years before retiring in the 1970s.

Happy Birthday, Mom!