The hardest part for me to accept is that 1968 was forty years ago.
The latest AARP Magazine features a detailed examination of that year. I know this because I get that magazine. Wow, I just admitted that I’m an AARP member. While I’m temporarily admitting to reality, I’ll acknowledge that I was in high school in 1968, which further adds to the personal significance of that year for me.
Every year contains important milestones, but 1968 seems to have more than its share of historically significant events. Humans orbited the moon for the first time. Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win the U.S. Open and Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman in Congress. 60 Minutes made its debut on TV and Elvis became a Dad. Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April and Presidential candidate Senator Robert Kennedy was killed two months later.
Protesters hit the streets and cities were burning. It felt like the country was coming apart at the seams. And my own generation seemed to be at the heart of the seam-ripping.
I sympathized with demonstrators protesting racial discrimination and the Viet Nam War, but I was afraid of the destruction caused by many of those protests. The military draft scared me; there was a real possibility I would have to fight a war I didn’t believe in. As we were coming of age, so was television news coverage; vivid nightly images of these conflicts added to the fear.
Yet in many ways I felt disconnected from those events. I was busy focusing on first love, the end of high school and driving privileges. And the generational divide in my house led to many intense arguments about everything from dating to race to politics to religion to where I would go to college.
Combine those emotionally charged ingredients, add the heat of raging teen angst, and you get a hell of a memorable gumbo.
Like it or not, Boomers are forced to relive 1968 because of the media attention of a 40-year anniversary; the zero year compels us to place extra emphasis on events we choose to celebrate for the joy they brought us or ignore for their pain. In my case, it does both.
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More images and links:
History Channel
A Newsweek article
Pop culture and fashion:
A 3-minute Mustang TV commercial:
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