The World War II "greatest generation," showered with accolades and a massive memorial on the National Mall, gets all the glory. Sorry, Tom Brokaw, (who coined the phrase), but it's time to retire its jersey. It's not fair to fellow Americans.

Take the generation that followed that generation, born in hard times. Its members are in their 80s now. We are losing a slew of these distinguished Americans every year without honoring their layer of history. Their generation is known as the silent generation, which is why you haven't heard of it.

Born in the Great Depression, in far fewer numbers than the "greatest generation" and the baby-boom generation, they have been lost in translation in the telling of history. Like a middle child, this generation was also passed over for the presidency. The presidency passed from a classic "greatest" member, George H.W. Bush, to a classic rebellious baby boomer, Bill Clinton, in 1993. All the noise and fuss over these vocal, populous groups has caused the in-between generation to be overlooked, but it deserves to be recognized.

Maya Angelou, the remarkably inspiring poet and writer, and Mike Nichols, the acclaimed theater and movie director, died in 2014. Nichols was born in Berlin to a Jewish family, which fled Nazi Germany when he was a child. Director of "The Graduate," he brought an urbane sensibility to comedy and tragedy, leaving a defining mark on American culture. He was one of myriad first-generation Jewish children who grew up in American cities — New York and Chicago, especially — in the 1930s.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in the Depression, a son of a Southern Baptist preacher, and became the greatest civil rights leader ever. It's sad to think King might still be alive, an octogenarian, if he had lived a full lifetime. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was slain at age 39. Another leading light was the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion considered one of the leading legislators of all time. Perhaps he was his generation's best hope for the presidency.

Also gone: enchanting child actress and adult ambassador Shirley Temple Black.

Philip Roth, arguably the greatest living American writer, and Woody Allen, master of comedy, were both born in the 1930s, as were news greats Dan Rather and Marvin Kalb.

Such individuals should be seen as connected to a broader garment of destiny. One of Roth's recent works, "Nemesis," conjured up the polio summers that my parents remember well. In fact, my mother was stricken with polio when she was 4, in 1939. She became a professor, not an easy thing for a woman her age. That's a shared experience, for sure.

My mother, father and their Midwestern peers remember World War II as children, fighting on the homefront with rationing and saving scraps. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a father figure to a nation of schoolchildren, his reassuring voice on the radio. On the day the president died, my father was 12, on his paper route in 1945. The weeping he still remembers.

So if you joined the Army, Navy or Marines to fight in World War II, you would glow forever in civilian eyes for fighting and winning a "just war." Then you could go to college free on the GI Bill and later buy a house on generous federal mortgages. Then you could live happily ever after in robust, optimistic times.

So I call this wave the greatest-opportunity generation. Does that work for you, Tom?

Two recent deaths in the "greatest": Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and folk singer and crusader Pete Seeger.

Hearing the grown-ups talk, I knew about the candlepower of their generation in the background. Leon Rosenberg, my father's friend from boyhood to medical school to this day, became dean of the Yale School of Medicine.

Hey, I'm not saying that those in the "greatest generation" aren't great. They are. But they're not the greatest of all time.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.