If I’d been born premature fifty years earlier than I was born premature, I’d not have survived. No chance. That said, seeing as I was conceived in the swinging sixties to unwed parents, who hastily got hitched, chances are I’d not have been conceived fifty years earlier, either.
So all in all, I am only here today because of the times my parents lived in, both from a social and a technological perspective.
Born in 1928: Died from hydrocephalaus and exposed spinal column.
1925 - Born to two working-class parents who have just moved from Alabama to Cleveland, Ohio’s Central neighborhood as part of the first Great Migration.
1930 - A severe ear infection leaves me severely hearing impaired at five years old. At this time hearing aids have just become somewhat portable due to advances in vacuum-tube technology, but being a black kid in Cleveland’s “ghetto” it is highly unlikely that I would have had access to them. Unable to hear my teachers in the regular school, I went to The Alexander Graham Bell School for the deaf. I would have had to learn sign language, and the quality of the education was not great, but I did pretty well. Outside of school I would have had to rely on my lip-reading ability to get by. I spent many, many hours by myself in the local library, losing myself in books - easy to do when you can hardly hear anything around you!
1935 - I was a delivery boy for for the Call & Post. We all got together one day for a photograph - you can see me in it, way in the back, with an aviator’s cap.
1942 - 1946: After Graduating fromEast Technical High School (where I ran track like our most famous alumni, Jesse Owens 
), I was unable to enlist in the military for the war effort due to my 4F status. Although factory work for blacks was increasing, a factory was not a good place for a hearing-impaired guy as well. Thanks to the support and donation of a hearing aid from the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center and my high scores at East Tech, I was able to attend the Case School of Applied Science, where I studied Mechanical Engineering. As the only black student at the school and only the second to attend after Ralph Gardner, I faced the same discrimination and lack of opportunities as he did, although I elected to stick it out rather than change schools.
1950’s and early 1960’s - Even with a Mechanical Engineering degree I would have had a difficult time getting a job in the field. I would have worked any job I could, perhaps staying at Case for graduate studies. It’s possible that I would have found an opportunity as an engineer to work at TRW here in Cleveland, or in Detroit with General Motors. For the sake of this story, I’ll say I earned a post-graduate degree and managed to get a research position at the NASA Lewis Research Center here in Cleveland. I also joined the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons.
Mid 1960’s - 1970’s - Married, with a son and living in the middle-class area of the Glenville neighborhood, I would have been eager to get involved in the Civil Right’s movement. I definitely would have attended King’s Speeches at Everlasting Baptist Church and Glenville High School and supported the Southern Christian Leadership Conference monetarily, although personally my political leanings would have aligned more with Stokely Carmichael. Considering where I worked and the safety of my family, I would have maintained a very low profile, with most of my support being financial. Things got pretty hot in Glenville in 1968, with the Glenville Shootout and the nearbyHough Riots. On the flip side, I’m directly involved in propulsion development with the Apollo Project. Those would have been contrasting and interesting times.
1970’s - Today: After a long career at NASA I accepted a teaching position at the Fenn College of Engineering, where I taught until retiring in 2000 at the age of 75. I now spend my last days travelling and tending to the greenhouse and garden I maintain at my East. Blvd home in Glenville, where I still live, as well as volunteering duties with my Masonic lodge and serving as a mentor to STEM students in my neighborhood. If I’m lucky, my wife, son, and grandchildren will all outlive me when I shuffle off this mortal coil in a few years.
My father’s joke was “I hated the Depression, it was so depressing” but he didn’t like when others – who didn’t experience the Great Depression – used it.
In any case, I would have been born in 1921 to a factory worker and a schoolmarm. I would still be the youngest of three and we wouldn’t have a lot of money. I assume that by living in a small town west of Chicago would we would survive the Depression well enough (my father said he was lucky, he lived on a farm in southern Minnesota so they had potatoes).
I’d be the right age to join the US Army for WWII and I’d want to do it “for my country” anyway if my current attitude jives with what my attitude then would be. I would likely be a radio operator and Airborne qualified, so my chances of getting shot up would have been huge.
I’d have been 27, and probably coming straight off the farm to the recruiting station. Unless I got drafted first.
I would have been born in 1926 Montreal. Assuming I survive cholera and the other diseases going around at the time, my working-class parents find me a job in a textile factory (I have such delicate fingers). With any luck I get my hands on a typewriter and move my way up to secretary or filing clerk. In my spare time I write serial novels and radio scripts and perhaps make some money at it.
Normal-ending parallel version: In the late 40s I marry a French-Canadian war veteran with a chip on his shoulder. We’re miserable by the time the Quiet Revolution rolls around in the 60s (even in this universe he won’t shut up about politics) but our divorce has to wait until the 70s when they are finally legalized. Many consider me a social pariah, but my friends think I’m a free spirit at the end of the hippie era.
Best-ending parallel version: As early as possible, I move to Ottawa and get a job in the war bureau. My unusual (for the time, for a woman) aptitude for math and languages leads to an opportunity in the cryptography department. My contributions to the Commonwealth war effort are classified and ultimately forgotten, but form a stepping stone to work in the field of micro-computing. I eventually jump from government census and tax projects to private industry. I retire in California on the profits from my employee shares in Apple or Microsoft.
For all those assuming they’d be killed as soldiers in WWII, I looked up the statistics. 16 million served, about 400K killed (292K KIA, 114K “Other” deaths). So you’d have a 97% chance of making it home alive.
I would be born in 1911. Daughter of a school teacher and a construction executive, 7th child in a Catholic family. I’d go to parochial school, probably be a teacher, as my mother and grandmother were. Both mother and grandmother continued to teach after they were married and started having kids. Unlike my present timeline, I’d probably marry - more than likely a Catholic boy - and have plenty of kids. I’d live a relatively pedestrian life, middle class.
All in all, except for the marriage thing (which I would’ve liked to have had), not too different from my life. I started working in HS as a department store clerk, moved into the office and started doing credit and collections work. Continued in credit and credit management until I became an analyst. However, I probably wouldn’t be living by myself in a small farm in Tennessee, I’d likely still live in Michigan.
StG
I would be Uber-Wealthy, having created a chain of automobile and motorcycle franchises post WWII.
Of course, surviving the Spanish Flu epidemic and being a teen-ager during the Great Depression made me a tough bastard. And “Fighter Ace” in the Pacific is a nice title to have as well. Screw all that book-learin’! I went to the school of “Hard Knocks”. I’ll never be the smartest person around, but I can hire the smartest person I can find!
I’m one of “The Greatest Generation” that Brokaw kid keeps talking about.
Now get off my lawn!
Born in 1903, son of a small-town mailman. Off to Berkeley in the Roaring 20s – which means that instead of being there when the football team sucked (in real life), I’d be there for our only national championship. So there’s that! 
Of course I wouldn’t have a degree in computer science; probably statistics or engineering or accounting. I probably would’ve gotten a job in a bank (probably in San Francisco), and hoped that it survived the Depression.
I’d be 93 years old, so my life would kind of suck most likely. But I would have been 22 in 1941 so I almost certainly would have served in WWII. Who knows what would have happened then, except you all would probably be speaking German.
I would have been born in 1897 in rural eastern Kentucky. My grandparents on both sides were farmers. Most likely my father would have been one also. So there I am hoeing crops for hours on end. Maybe an eighth grade education. None of the local roads would be paved for another thirty years or so.
nm
I’d almost certainly have wound up in WWII. I’d have been 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and would have graduated 6 months later.
Tough call on what would happen, though–I don’t know enough about college deferments, etc., during WWII. My father was career navy, then a doctor, so let’s assume the same. Mother also navy, also a nurse. Both officers. (Well, I guess my mom wouldn’t have been, right? Were there female officers in the WWI era? Weren’t they all just support staff, not actual military?) They would want me to go to college, but they would also expect I would serve. And they’d want me to be an officer, rather than enlisted… So what happened if you were in the middle of college and got drafted? My expected graduation date would have been in summer 1946. If I got a draft notice my sophomore year, would I be allowed to defer until I was finished college? Would I be allowed to go to OCS even if I hadn’t finished my degree?
Looking at the wider picture, if I lived through the Depression, I would almost certainly have chosen a more “practical” college track: science and engineering, rather than writing and art. (My grades in the sciences and my SAT math scores were good… I just would have had to work my butt of to figure out calculus, which I dodged in high school.)
I think our family would have done relatively well through the Depression, still, with my father as a doctor. Although, actually, now that I think further about it, we might have been really screwed–my dad had Parkinson’s. Without modern meds, he might very well have been dead (and certainly retired) before I graduated from H.S. My mom probably would have been working to support the family, and my older brothers might not have left home; they might have stuck around to help out.
But at any rate, I did get a full scholarship to school, so assume that’s the same. I can’t pass up the chance to attend college for free, so I don’t enlist right out of H.S., I go to college. The war is on. Then, let’s assume I get drafted midway through school. If I’m allowed a deferral, I stay through until I graduate, at which time the war is over. I still probably join the Navy, but maybe I work on research (Penn State had/has a significant Naval research dept., where they worked on torpedo design, acoustics, etc.). If I’m not allowed a deferral, I join the Navy (or wait… can you not choose your branch of service if you’re drafted? Are you just thrown into the Army?). Wind up in the Pacific on a ship, hopefully don’t get blown up.
Actually, another thought occurred to me: It would have been far more likely that I would have gone into medicine, with my father being a doctor and good work being so dear when I was growing up. So instead, I’m going to college for biology on a med school track, and if I’m drafted and can’t defer … do I become a Navy Corpsman? Then I probably wind up in the middle of the Pacific island battles with the Marines, and may or may not survive. Yeek.
With my coveted high school diploma in hand, I likely would’ve worked as an office clerk of some sort, making a comfortable living wage. I think my life would’ve been less interesting but more stable. I haven’t decided yet if that’s a good or bad thing.
Very good chance of death, as most of the millions of dead during the Spanish Influenza epidemic died of pneumonia, and the epidemic really got going in the spring of 1919.
The Spanish flu killed a lot of infants and old people as well, it’s just known for killing adults. The deadly W, they called it, as the mortality graph looked like a W.
I would have been born in 1936 in Mississippi, which is not a fun place for blacks. Luckily for me I’m mixed, so I’m light skinned. I definitely would not have been about to pass but it is better than nothing.
Assuming I would have been able to get a basic education, which isn’t a sure thing, I would have joined the military for Korea and volunteered for something combat related, as I’m stupid like that. After Korea I would have either gone to California to look for work, but I could definitely see myself making the military as a career.
1912? Not a good time for a girl raised Catholic. Would not have gotten a good education, given that my family was strictly lower/working class. Would have been expected to marry and have as many children as my body could bear, no contraception. I’d have been wretched in that life, with no treatment for migraines, either. Not suited for being a nun, either, mind.
I would have died 5 minutes after being born. Since my breathing was not working properly, in 1912 I would have perished on my first day on the planet.
I would have just missed working on the Manhattan Project, but my chosen profession would still be getting a lot of respect.
I’d still be milking my fame as a Medal of Honor winner in World War I.
There’s something which would have made an enourmous difference in my life and that I didn’t get to mention in my previous post, but I’ve been trying to figure out how would that have affected my life and I just can’t - too many variables. I can come up with some possibilities, though.
The Spanish Civil War: if I was in Pamplona when it started and I wasn’t married, I would have volunteered on the Carlista side, as all my relatives from there did (the married women did not join the army but they did join auxiliary bodies). I would most likely have spent the whole war there, most likely as a nurse (one of my aunts got moved to a different job but because she was evidently unsuited for nursing - I hate it but I’m good at it) or perhaps, given a scientific background, as a pharmacist’s assistant at the hospital.
If I’d been in Bilbao, I would have been on the wrong side, politically: I might have tried to escape to Pamplona, or weathered the storm until the Nacionales arrived. If this last, I would have joined the auxiliaries and gee, more nursing (or more mixing potions)!
