As an historian of the decade of the teens, this is one of my favorite photos.  It shows seven young women, probably no older than 25, on a private beach in about 1915.  It had to be private beach because you can see their knees, a no-no in those days. They did not have a care in the world, like many girls of the same age today. Over the next decade and a half, while they were wives and mothers, they would see their brothers die by the hundreds on the battlefield in Europe, sustain more loses from Spanish Flu then the dead of World War I, watch in horror as the Russian Revolution consumed the most populace nation on earth, suffer through an era of violence unmatched in American history, lose every dime they had saved during the Great Depression and fight for a political sexual equality they have yet to receive today.  Here they are, healthy and happy without a care in the world. All I have to say, “Thanks, Grandma, for getting America this far.  Now it’s my turn.”