We subscribed to LIFE magazine when I was a kid. I remember they ran a series for the 50th, I guess it started in 1964 when I was 12. American Heritage also came out with a big, illustrated book that I got for Christmas that year. And at that point, veterans of the Great War were in their 70s. Veterans of WWII today are older, or dead. The only two guys in my immediate family who fought in the war, both died, so there were no veterans I knew. My grandfathers had been too young, and too old for WWII.
It's weird that LIFE also ran a centennial series on the Civil War, when I was 10. That centennial of a war that occurred, at that point, a hundred years ago seemed so remote. And yet, here I am in my dotage celebrating the centennial of a war that I remember as a kid being not that remote at all.
When THE WORLD at WAR first ran on PBS in 1973, WWII had been over for 28 years. Now, when I watch episodes of The World at War, they are 45 years old, and their original airing is more remote than the war was when I first watched the series.
Time! Time! Time!