Tink, your post makes me remember...my father died in 1980, but in the 1970's the folks came to visit me in Seattle and we went to the movie EASY RIDER. The hippie idea of 'finding yourself;' that was incomprehensible to Dad.
In his life that would have been a ridiculous luxury, akin to contemplating your navel or something. Born a few years before the Spanish flu, they had come through the Great Depression then put their all into prevailing in the war -- their belief in American democracy was total.
* * *
Yes, as I grow older myself, I think about my parents often, their all-out commitment to our country, and I am secretly glad they did not see where the USA is now.