You’re right: the years would have brought a semblance of maturity or, as in the case of the average lib/socialist/marxist, lifelong immaturity and angry jealousy at the responsible, independent Americans.
If for no other reason, maybe I like to think that his Dad lived in that sort of peace of imagining that his son’s maturity would have brought him back to seeing the good he had been raised with and come back to it. A man deserves that.