According to news reports, Kathleen Casey Kirschling of New Jersey will apply for Social Security benefits today, in anticipation of turning 62 on January 1, 2008. In a 1980 study, researcher Landon Jones tagged Kathleen Casey as the iconic “first Baby Boomer.” The term “Baby Boomer” refers to those born between 1946 and 1964 in the population explosion that followed World War II. Kathleen Casey was born one second after midnight on January 1, 1946, in Philadelphia.

I’m eight years younger than Kathleen Casey, putting me in the midst of the “Boom.” My generation has been probably the most studied, most written about, and some say, most indulged, generation in history. Much of postwar culture was shaped for us or by us. It was during our lifetimes that the H-bomb was produced; the Cold War started, raged for forty-five years, and ended; rock’n'roll, Barbie dolls, and McDonald’s became American icons; hippies, “Weathermen,” and Black Panthers scared the daylights out of America; men walked on the moon; tens of thousands of Boomers lost their lives in Vietnam; the Civil Rights Era shone; personal computers were invented; the Internet and I-Pods came along.

This weekend we were down south in Ventura, California, to witness the baptism of our niece’s son. It occurred to me that by the time he’s my age, it will be over hundred years since my birth. World War II will be distant history; the Internet and I-Pods, long obsolete. I wonder what he will see in his lifetime.

Coming Tomorrow: Another Law Lesson–Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in Genealogy.