Hazel Prince was, like many other, a daughter of two generations. Born in 1945, she was the last of the Silent Generation and one of the first Baby Boomers. Like the other daughters and sons that were born between generations, she never fit in.
Hazel never knew poverty and hunger as the Silent Generation.
She never understood the thrill of winning the war like the Baby Boomers.
To Hazel, war meant sadness and the unknown; Berlin had taken her father months before she was born. To Hazel Prince, her father was only three things: a photo, a dirty dog tag and history.
No one was surprised when she grew up and became a hippie. And even though she technically was from the Silent Generation, she made sure that the world would hear her voice.
Hazel marched with Martin Luther Jr. to Washington, D.C., in 1963. She was at Selma on March 7, 1965, and in the same year was back in Washington, D.C., on April 17.
In 1967, Hazel distributed flowers near the Pentagon. In 1969, she celebrated love and life in Woodstock.
Hazel couldn't understand how anyone could be against peace, love and life. She tried to talk, she tried to be empathic, but no one cared for what she had to say. To them, she was embarrassing her father's sacrifice and memory. No one listened when Hazel said that war didn't give her a chance to create a memory of her father.
As the decades passed, the wars became fading memories. The Baby Boomers grew, as did capitalism. The hippies of the past became the tramps of the present.
Hazel Prince died alone, poor, and marginalized by a society that saw her as something hidden and forgotten. She wasn't from the Silent Generation; she wasn't a Baby Boomer.
Hazel never fit in because she tried to change the world through love. But the world never wanted to be loved.
THE END
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A hippie, also spelled as hippy, is a member of the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularise use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie