Everybody's talking about the millennium. Frankly, I'm more interested in the 20th century, probably because I've lived through more than half of it. Just think of what we have today that wasn't around when the century began. Japanese cars, Boeing 747's, VCR's, cell phones, genetically altered foods, a woman's right to vote, the "pill", men on the moon-well, you get the picture.

It has been a fantastic century. Knowledge doubles every 18 months to 2 years. Thank goodness for huge computer memories to store all that information our minds just can't quite encompass. Science and medicine have eradicated smallpox, discovered antibiotics and vaccines and unraveled much of the human genetic code. The reach into the heavens, revealing so much about the history of the universe, is absolutely extraordinary. What a time to be alive!

But, the 20th century has also been one of unimaginable tragedy as well as mind-expanding achievement. I've spent the last week wandering among the many beautiful monuments of Washington, D.C. I never fail to visit the Vietnam Memorial, that vast wall of black granite with nearly 60,000 American names inscribed on it. That was my generation's war. There's also the Korean Memorial, recalling a terrible 3 years when 50,000 Americans died in the bitter cold of that Asian peninsula, 50,000 among the 630,000 war dead.

I also visited President Woodrow Wilson's home. The home where he lived after he left the presidency, paralyzed from a series of strokes. He had battled tirelessly to persuade the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. After the horrors of the First World War, he believed it was his duty to create a structure to end all wars. That was his promise to the American soldiers who had fought so bravely in that war. President Wilson failed.

It was during the Second World War that I was born. A war in which my father fought-through the Aleutians and the South Pacific. It was a war that saw the development of the atom bomb that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and tens of thousands of the civilians who lived in those cities. The nuclear age had begun..

The First and Second World Wars wiped out vast swaths of two generations of valiant young men. After the Second World War, America, the least exhausted of the victors, rebuilt her former enemies. That, in my mind, stands out as one of the great moments of the 20th century, something that had never been done before, something that the far-sighted George Marshall envisioned as a way to a more permanent peace. He was at least partly right.

The 20th century has also seen unimaginable brutality by humans against their fellow humans. Hitler, with his vision of the supreme German race, murdered millions of Jews. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong destroyed countless millions of their citizens. In Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Ruanda, among so many other nations, cruelty beyond comprehension has abounded. Neighbors killing neighbors. People of one religious persuasion murdering those of another. For what? A moment of revenge for some ancient crime? A grab for power?

As the 20th century-our century-comes to an end, there is reason to hope. Brokered by President Clinton and nurtured by former Senator George Mitchell, the intractable "troubles" in Northern Ireland have yielded to a joint Catholic/Protestant government. May it finally bring peace and prosperity to a tortured people.

Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. May the difficult negotiations between Israel and Syria and the Palestinians and Israel bring a final peace to that desperately troubled region.

The end of the Cold War has brought a measure of relief to a fractured world, relief from the fearsome threat of nuclear war. May the relative calm help the impoverished millions of the former Soviet bloc build a new freedom amidst real economic opportunity.

The 21st century looms ahead with enormous promise. May we who have the privilege of opening the new millennium do so with the tolerance and respect for one another that are the building blocks of peace.