As Indy's first baby boomer turns 70, a comparison with the millennial generation

He is Indiana's first baby boomer and the second boomer in the entire U.S. And on Jan. 1 he will reach  a milestone, cross a divide, boldly go where only one boomer has gone before.

Ed Mahern will turn 70.

Born Jan. 1, 1946, at 12:00:02, one second after a New Jersey mother delivered her baby girl, Mahern  has spent his life in the vanguard of demographers' "pig in a python," that unprecedented procreational surge that began as World War II ended.

Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, dominated society all their lives. Even as pre-adolescents they ruled, forcing construction of new schools and new suburbs. As adolescents they threw out Elvis Presley for The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Boomers, who are likely to call Facebook "the Facebook," are still nearly a third of the U.S. population. But the beginning of the end of their rule is at hand — or already has happened.  The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that "millennials," that tech-savvy generation born between 1982 and 2000 that starts sentences with "so," may have started outnumbering boomers in June.

To better understand the generations, The Indianapolis Star once again sat down with Mahern (The Star visited the Indianapolis resident on his 65th birthday). But this time The Star also brought in his niece, Emma Mahern, a millennial. Emma turned 30 in April. The two discussed aspects of life that help define their generations.

Hello, 2016: 14 things to look forward to in Indy

Technology

Emma does not own a TV but occasionally binge-watches "American Horror Story" and "Scandal" on her computer via Hulu or Netflix. She is on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram but not Vine or Snapchat, which she said are the province of younger millennials.

Ed can remember when his family got its first TV. He was 8 or 9 and didn't pay much attention to it except for "The Ed Sullivan Show." These days he and his wife watch "Modern Family," "Fargo" and "Saturday Night Live." They record the shows and watch them when they feel like it. As an adult Ed adopted quickly to new technology. He got a "car phone" way back in 1986 and created a Facebook page in 2010.

For millennial home buyers, it�s about �location, location, engagement�

Entertainment

Emma considers Madonna (a boomer) as the consummate performer of the millennial generation, but she herself favored Salt-N-Pepa (all three band members are from Generation X). She said she would try to score tickets to Salt-N-Pepa's Jan. 19 Indianapolis concert at The Vogue in Broad Ripple.

Ed preferred The Beatles to the Rolling Stones (all the Beatles and all the Stones except Ron Wood were born before the baby boom). The last concert he attended was Al Green in Las Vegas.

Sports

Emma, like many Catholic school girls in Indianapolis, took kickball seriously and played in the citywide league. She said that while basketball star Michael Jordan dominated national sports culture during her youth, she herself was a "Reggie Miller fanatic."

Ed's favorite childhood sport was baseball. He still has a glove autographed by Ray Jablonski, a journeyman who broke in with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953 and in eight seasons hit .268.

Work

Ed planned to go to law school after college (Ball State University, Class of '67) but scotched that plan because the Vietnam War was escalating and law students lost their draft exemption. Schoolteachers still were exempt, so Ed, who thought the war a mistake, became a schoolteacher. Later he went into real estate, starting an appraisal company. A Democrat, he has long been active in politics and has held a number of public offices, including state representative.  Ed these days is a lobbyist, representing Indianapolis Power and Light, among other clients.

Emma graduated from Indiana University in 2006 with a degree in drama and got a job as house manager for Beef & Boards Dinner Theater on Indianapolis' Northwestside. She worked there two years before moving to Chicago to work in a shelter for families in poverty, most of them Hispanic. Emma speaks fluent Spanish. Later she returned to Indianapolis to go to law school and today focuses her law practice on Hispanics with personal injury cases and cases involving workers' compensation and immigration.

Marriage

Ed was 21 and right out of college when he married his college sweetheart. A lot of boomers did that, according to the Census Bureau. The average age for 1967 marriages was 21 for women and 23 for men. The couple had three children before separating in 1990. They later divorced. A lot of boomers did that as well, about 40 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ed remarried in 2007.  His wife, Mary Jayne Mahern, is assistant to the regional vice president at the International Brotherhood of Carpenters.

Emma married in 2009 at 24. She says she was among the first of her friends to marry. The average age for 2009 marriages was 26 for women and 28 for men.

Emma's husband is Eduardo S. Luna, an artist and community organizer born in Acapulco, Mexico. Immigration has added more numbers to millennials than to any other age group, according to Census Bureau data, and that has contributed to millennials' gaining on boomers. Twenty-one percent of millennials are Hispanic compared with slightly more than 10 percent of boomers, according to a  Pew study.

Upward mobility

Ed was 10 when the family moved from a small house on Indianapolis' Southside to a larger one the 4100 block of Broadway Street.  Today he and his wife live in a remodeled 1930s Craftsman house that overlooks Garfield Park on the Southside.

Emma was 10 when her family moved from 40th and Central, which is around the corner from the house on Broadway, to a Northside suburban enclave near the Meridian Hills Country Club. Today Emma wants nothing to do with the suburbs. "I like urban neighborhoods," she said, "where you're closer to your neighbors and you can walk to the store." She and her husband live on the Near Westside.

Sixty-two percent of millennials think as Emma thinks, according to a 2014 Nielsen survey, which also found that "for the first time since the 1920s growth in U.S. cities outpaces growth outside of them."

The automobile

When Ed graduated from college he immediately bought a new car, a German-made Volkswagen that would be the first of a tsunami of small foreign cars that would change the way Americans think about cars. Later, partly because he's political, Ed drove American cars, including in the '70s a V-8 powered Oldsmobile nearly 20 feet long. Today, he drives a Subaru Forester, which is foreign but politically OK because the Japanese automaker has a manufacturing plant in Indiana.

Emma has no interest in cars. She commuted by bike for several years and wishes she still could but can't because her office is too far away. She recently bought an '08 Nissan Altima, "a big upgrade" from her previous car, an '02 Chevy Malibu. Despite the upgrade, Emma said: "I hate driving my car."

Boomers adored cars. They danced to hit songs about cars like the Pontiac GTO, the Ford Mustang and something called a "Little Deuce Coupe." But millennials? Meh. In 2008, only half of 17-year-olds had even bothered to get a driver's license compared with 69 percent in 1983. The reason: Researchers have speculated that today's teens connect with social media and so can socialize without a car.

Potential skeletons in closets

Ed claims to have sat out the disco era entirely. "I'm not sure I could even tell you where Lucifer's was," he said, referring to Indianapolis' top disco. It was at Keystone at the Crossing.

Emma said she never owned even one Beanie Baby, nor did she own a Furby. She admits to listening to great quantities of music by NSYNC and Backstreet Boys but only on the radio. She never bought an album.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter: @WillRHiggins.

Boomer or not a boomer? Test your generational knowledge with this quiz

We're over it: As we enter 2016, these things can stay in the past