There are not many people alive who can testify to the remarkable twentieth century. Bertram Clive Beardsley, age ninety-one, can-from firsthand experience. Born in 1924, Kansas City, Beardsley grew up during the depression, served in World War II and Korea, earned a master's degree on the GI Bill, and worked in countries where Cold War hostilities bubbled under the surface. He married a woman from Belize and raised two biracial children at a time when such a family turned heads and caused comments. Along the way, Beardsley played baseball and jazz, took his family around the world, and strove to be a man in full.