HEALTHIER, WEALTHIER, NOT NECESSARILY HAPPIER

One Woman's Story Mirrors Nation's

The same life can have many versions. What you hear depends on what is told
and what is excluded. Joanne's story is notable for its malleability -- how
easily the selection of events could have made it an American romance or an
American tragedy.

In that way, the story of her family could be the story of all of us.
Tracing the arc of 20th-century America, she and her descendants have
pursued -- and achieved -- ever-greater degrees of financial and physical
security. And yet each successive generation faced new, enormous
challenges. Joanne was born in 1920, the year women won the right to vote.
It was also the beginning of Prohibition.

She was the first child born to Charlie and Rose. Rose, a proper American,
had seen Charlie, a young Irish jockey, riding at Pimlico. She fell in love
with him.

She followed Charlie through his riding career. She survived his alternate
career as a flyweight boxer. She even learned to live with his later work,
delivering whiskey to speak-easies in Baltimore.

Although most people associate Prohibition with violence, Joanne did not.
She liked to tell stories about accompanying her father to make deliveries,
and we can speculate that Charlie must have been very confident. Then x
again, Joanne probably never saw her father as others did. One look and you
knew he was a man you didn't want to cross.

A horseshoe-shaped scar sat symmetrically across the top of his forehead.
His flattened boxer nose gave his nostrils a bullish flare. His ears were
strangely mangled. And his flat-knuckled fists broadened his hard-skinned
hands. Charlie would rather punch than talk.

Rose died young, of tuberculosis. Joanne and her brother, Bill, who both
tested positive for tuberculosis, were raised in a sanitarium run by nuns.
Or at least that is the story Joanne told. The truth may have been tougher,
because Charlie drank. He also had a weakness, or need, for opiates. No one
could survive the punishment his body had taken without something to deaden
the pain. It worked, but at a price. Charlie spent much of his life in the
streets, showing up in Joanne's life with new promises, then
disappointments. He lived into his mid-60s, a significant achievement for a
long train wreck of a life. A pivotal time At her birth, Joanne's America
was almost unbelievably different from today's. For one thing, it was 10
times as dangerous just to be born in 1920. The infant mortality rate was
greater than 100 per 1,000. Among the poor, the odds were even worse: One
baby in six would die within a year of birth. Today the infant mortality
rate has dropped 93 percent, to about seven per 1,000.

In 1920, more people died of tuberculosis than of cancer. Typhoid fever,
malaria, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough and diphtheria also loomed
large. The two preceding years, 1918 and 1919, brought a pandemic of
influenza that killed millions of people worldwide. It has taken nearly a
century for a threat comparable to the 1918-19 Spanish flu to emerge, the
H5N1 avian flu virus. Not until 1928 did Alexander Fleming discover
penicillin, the first antibiotic.

In the first 80 years of the last century, death from acute diseases fell
more than 98 percent, thanks to antibiotics and vaccines. Joanne didn't
know it, but she was on the cusp of the first generation of Americans who
could influence their health as much by personal decisions as by the
conditions of daily life.

For a white woman born in 1920, life expectancy was only 58.5 years, about
two years greater than the life expectancy for white men and nearly 12
years greater than the life expectancy of women of all other races. While a
significant racial gap still exists, it has been much reduced. Indeed, the
expansion of life expectancy in the last century may be the single largest
difference between the generations.

Consider these figures. In 1940, Joanne's son Bobby was born with a life
expectancy of 62.8 years, an improvement of 6.5 years since 1920. Stephen,
born in 1963, came into the world with an expectancy of 67.5 years. And
Shelby was born in 1997 with an expectancy of 79.9 years. The increase in
life expectancy created the institution of retirement, the world of Sun
Cities and the dark horizon of nursing homes as those who once died young
now outlive their minds, their bodies, or both. But Joanne would not have
that luxury.

Ups And Downs

When she graduated from high school, Joanne left the safety of the
sanitarium. She went to work for a family, as many Irish girls did. Then
she met Robert, a recent college graduate and the only son of a prosperous
engineer. Robert's father had helped install electric power plants across
the country for American Electric Power. A beautiful and naive young woman,
she married quickly -- but not quite quickly enough. Conception wasn't
immaculate, but it was immediate. Her first son, Bobby, was born in 1940,
just before her 20th birthday. The marriage didn't last.

Like Joanne's father, Robert drank. Toward the end of World War II, he
joined the Merchant Marine, leaving Joanne to fend for herself and her son.
When he returned in 1947, they divorced.

Life was not easy for a single mom who never received child support. She
worked as a secretary. It was difficult to make ends meet. At one time she
rented attic rooms in a house with no indoor plumbing. When things were
most desperate, she and her son shared a room in a rooming house. They
cooked their meals on a hot plate in a whitewashed basement room next to
the coal bin. She knew she had reached a real low when she had to take her
son's penny collection, all of $2, to get through the week. Later, Joanne
met George, a chemical salesman who had grown up poor and Catholic in
Brooklyn. He was getting a divorce in Reno. In the late 1940s, when the
traditional family was still the norm, the Nevada city was the epicenter of
American divorce.

George -- tall, powerfully built and successful -- seemed to be everything
Joanne's first husband had not been.

A New Nation

Attitudes about divorce were just beginning to change. When Joanne was born
in 1920, 60 percent of the population at least 15 years old lived as
married householders. Only 1 percent said they were divorced. Questions
about cohabitation simply weren't asked.

A recent Census Bureau report now shows that living alone is the most
common living arrangement in America, accounting for 25.6 percent of all
households.

Some see this positively, saying that modern affluence opens more choices.
Others, like Robert Putnam and his book Bowling Alone, see a breakdown in
community and increasing isolation.

America was younger back then, too. According to historian David Kyvig, in
1920, 51 percent of the population of 106 million was 24 or younger, the
median age was 25, and only 4.5 percent of the population was 65 or older.

By 2000, the census showed the median age had risen to 35, and 12.4 percent
of the population was older than 65.

The census of 1920 identified 89.7 percent of the population as white, 9.9
percent as black, and a trace element of 0.17 percent as Asian. (Hispanics
were included in the white population.) Despite waves of immigration, more
than 83 percent of the population had been born and raised in the United
States. Immigration restrictions put in place in the '20s made that a
high-water mark for foreign birth. In 2000, by contrast, whatever the worry
about our borders, particularly with Mexico, 88.9 percent of our population
was born and raised in the United States.

Starting over Nearly broke from George's divorce settlement, alimony and
child support, Joanne and her second husband started their marriage in a
small New Jersey garden apartment.

While George had no assets, he still had his ambition. It was fierce. Over
a period of years, he taught himself finance, partnered with another man to
start a plastics company and built it into one of the largest producers of
vinyl plastic in the country.

In the process, he took the company public and became wealthy. He added to
his wealth by arranging financing deals for small chemical companies.
George was ahead of his time in using Wall Street. He helped float junk
bonds before they were called junk bonds. He was doing mezzanine financing
before Michael Milken reached puberty.

George hungered for the trappings of wealth. If he didn't have the money,
he borrowed it.

The first sign of wealth was a yacht. It was followed by a large house in
Westfield, N.J., a second home at the Jersey shore, boats for the three new
sons, full-time household help, a driver and jewelry from Harry Winston.
Joanne, the poor Irish girl, was now regularly mistaken for another Irish
girl who became a princess, actress Grace Kelly.

Visits to New York always included stays at the Pierre, the Plaza or the
St. Regis. She joked that she wanted at least one of her sons to go to
Harvard because she liked the ladies room at the Harvard Club. (She got her
wish.) By 1961, George had appeared on the cover of Chemical Week. By 1962,
Joanne's favorite story was about taking the yacht Joanne IV to Hyannis,
Mass., tying up at a marina slip and plugging in the phone. It immediately
started to ring. "Who is this?" a surprised voice asked.

"This is Joanne, aboard Joanne IV. With whom am I speaking?" "This is the
White House, ma'am. You are in President Kennedy's slip." Easy money
Despite the borrowing undertaken to finance World War I and the employment
upheaval that followed it, by 1920 the government was running a surplus of
$291 million, which grew until the Great Depression hit in earnest in 1931.
Joanne was born into a world of relatively simple pay-as-you-go government.
Social Security and Medicare did not yet exist. No one had to consider
future liabilities.

Without Social Security there was no employment tax. The income tax itself,
passed in 1913, affected only a small number of Americans and provided only
about one-fifth of federal revenue.

Although the original income tax had ballooned to rates as high as 73
percent (on incomes over $1.5 million), there was no tax on taxable income
under $2,000. The vast majority of workers paid x no income taxes. Skilled
male workers in manufacturing industries earned an average of $29 a week,
unskilled men earned $22 a week, and female production workers earned $15 a
week. (Yes, $29, $22 and $15 a week.) Henry Ford had brought the cost of
the original Model T down to $300 by 1920, a price that put it in range of
millions of workers. But another event really opened the door to mass
ownership -- consumer credit. In 1919, General Motors and DuPont created
General Motors Acceptance Corp. for financing automobile purchases. By
1920, DuPont had purchased 28 percent of GM stock and forced out the man
who created it, William Durant. From then on, consumer financing soared.

By 1926, three-fourths of all GM auto purchases were done on credit.
Instead of being a big, unmanageable purchase that few could afford, owning
a car became a matter of monthly payments.

The same monthly payment opened the world of trade-ins and annual model
changes, creating a world of fashion rather than the single lifetime
purchase of a durable vehicle that Henry Ford had envisioned. Still, cars
were a rarity. So were many other things we take for granted. Today, when
we measure the scope of a natural disaster, one of the first statistics
cited is the number of homes left without electricity. In 1920, although
commercial electricity had been around for about 40 years, 65 percent of
all homes still lacked electricity.

That means two-thirds of the population used candles or kerosene for light
and iceboxes for food, and could not have used (even had they been
invented) most of the appliances we take for granted today. Sixty-five
percent of households did not have telephone service.

Drugs' Influence

It was a different world -- except for one possible parallel. The Volstead
Act ushered in 13 years of Prohibition. It also created a new criminal
industry -- the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages -- and
unexpected opportunity.

"Young, ambitious men," historian Kyvig writes, "who because of their
immigrant background found it difficult to obtain jobs or advancement in
legal occupations, saw opportunity, profit, and no disgrace in
bootlegging." Only 10 years later, one-third of all federal prison inmates
would be Prohibition violators.

Some things don't change. In the year 2000, according to Human Rights
Watch, 22 percent of those in federal or state prisons were there for drug
convictions. Federal, state and local spending for the "War on Drugs" is
now estimated to exceed $50 billion a year, with most of it spent on
prisons rather than rehabilitation or treatment. Despite that, drugs are
available on playgrounds throughout America, and the average pizza delivery
driver has a better idea of where the crack and crystal-meth houses are
than the Drug Enforcement Administration does. All of these economic and
social trends would affect Joanne's descendants throughout the American
century. But the spread of narcotics would have a particularly insidious
influence.

Pursuit of happiness Inside its glamorous exterior, Joanne's life was
getting darker and darker. She had three more children, and each birth was
followed by a serious depression, anger, suicide attempts and long
psychiatric hospitalizations. She made light of the hospitalizations,
joking that she met some of the nicest people there.

In fact, she felt powerless. Everything in her life was out of her control
and unreal. She started to drink. Her doctors were generous, providing her
with pills to sleep, pills to calm her and pills to help her wake up. She
never believed that the wealth that surrounded her was real. She was
certain it could disappear at any moment.

Had she lived, she would have learned she was right. The wealth did
disappear. But she didn't live. At 52, she learned she had breast cancer.
Exactly five years later, as she was ready to cross the fateful five-year
mark for being cancer-free, the doctors found a spot on her liver. She was
dead six months later, at 57.

She left behind her husband of nearly 30 years, four healthy,
college-educated sons and, eventually, six grandchildren. The sons all took
very different paths -- a university professor, a golf pro, a tugboat
captain and a financial columnist.

Joanne's is a true American story. America is the land of opportunity. But
that doesn't mean it's always the land of milk and honey. Over the years,
her son Bobby -- the one with the $2 penny collection -- has thought of his
mother's story many times. It could, he says, be something from a John
O'Hara or James Michener novel, a big story about life in America. It could
also be a story noir, like a Eugene O'Neill play or a William Faulkner novel.

But most of the time he just wishes she could have been happy.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

SEPT. 25: Bobby Stays in the Ring Born 1940 - World War II is starting, and
companies compete to offer better pensions and health benefits. Social
Security pays its first check. After the war, the GI Bill ushers in an age
of unprecedented prosperity and a baby boom. Home mortgages become easier
to get, and suburbs are invented. Fueled by rock 'n' roll played on
transistor radios, social attitudes begin to change.

OCT. 2: Steve Reaches for the Sky Born 1963 - The Vietnam War, the Cold
War, the Generation Gap, protests, assassinations, a stagnating economy,
high divorce rates and a growing media culture contribute to the Great
Negativity. Yet we are wealthier than we've ever been, can travel to the
moon and stand on the verge of decades of peace.

OCT. 9: Shelby's World Born 1997 - America is even wealthier and more
powerful, but a threat of global terrorism is emerging. Meanwhile, the
country has largely worked through its social upheavals. But seniors'
health and retirement benefits threaten to bankrupt the country. Never
before have people been able to - or had to - make more choices that affect
their health and financial security.

OUR CHANGING AMERICAN LIFE

U.S. population in millions: 1920 -- 106; 1940 --132; 1960 --179; 2000 --
281.4

Percentage foreign-born: 1920 -- 13%; 1940 -- 9%; 1960 -- 5%; 2000 -- 11%

Median age: 1920 -- 25.3; 1940 -- 29; 1960 -- 29.5; 2000 -- 35.3

Percentage 65 and older: 1920 -- 5%; 1940 -- 7%; 1960 -- 9%; 2000 -- 12%

Percentage who were homeowners: 1920 -- 46%; 1940 -- 44%; 1960 -- 62%; 2000
- -- 66%

Percentage with electricity: 1920 -- 35%; 1940 -- 70%; 1960 -- 98%; 2000 --
99%

Percentage living alone: 1920 -- NA; 1940 -- 8%; 1960 --13%; 2000 -- 26%

Percentage married: 1920 -- NA; 1940 -- 76%; 1960 -- 74%; 2000 -- 53%

Millions of motor vehicles: 1920 -- 9.2; 1940 -- 32.4; 1960 -- 73.8; 2000
- -- 221

Median family income: 1920 -- NA; 1940 -- NA; 1960 -- $5,620; 2000 -- $41,990

Birth rate per thousand: 1920 -- 27.7; 1940 -- 19.4; 1960 -- 23.7; 2000 --
14.4

Death rate per thousand: 1920 -- 13; 1940 -- 10.8; 1960 -- 9.5; 2000 -- 8.7

Male life expectancy at birth: 1920 -- 53.6; 1940 -- 60.8; 1960 -- 66.6;
2000 -- 74.3

History Channel timeline -- 1920 1940 1960 2000