The majority of students from Windsor, Ct high school from 1968 to 1972 were white and black suburban kids whose parents had married after World War II, planning neighborhood cookouts, carnivals, the latest G.E.appliances, and domestic tranquility, having returned frrom that international bloodbath. Those parents probably hoped for the unremarkable safety of friendly playgrounds for their kids, a church or synagogue with good people and a decent job.The Jewish families were particulariy proud of the defeat of Hitler.
1968 to 1972 was a turbulent time in America for the baby boomers of WWII now coming of age as the continuing escalation of Southeast Asia's civil war became our war. U.S.'s involvement in South Vietnam, to save the fragile democracy against the North Vietnamese Viet Cong, was doomed from the start. The population who presented as South Vietnamese were often Viet Cong by night and infiltrated our troops. The underground quarters dug by the North Vietnamese tunnelled under South Vietnam and American soldiers were ambused from secret points in the hills as North Vietnamese emerged from the tunnels to attack.
At first Vietnam was a voluntary war. But when the draft was instituted, it changed the climate into radical resistance and we were just of age to be drafted. Across America, there were protests in the streets, people burned their draft cards, a monk was filmed burning himself to death in protest. Counterculture dress became popular; men grew there hair long, women and men began wearing peasant looking hand sewn shirts,beads and bell bottoms, and the look wasdefiantly unlike the suburban junior high kids we had been.
Protest music, originally started as folk music with Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Ronnie Gilbert, but evolved into electric as amplfication hit the stage.The electric Wookstock concert followed. Some of us went to that 3 day outdoor concert on Gasger's farm, a video documentary is still available of that breakthough time. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens filled the air with sound. Other things filled the air, too. The open use of drugs has become part of the counterculture.
The new electrifed sounds of our own gifted Eric Goffhelf, Dave Aston, Chuck Sadosky, Ralph DeLorso, Windsor's Rock Band, the Wild Weeds, featuring Al Anderson and their hit "No Good to Cry", our beloved blues singer and guitar teacher from Windsor music center, Gene Donaldson, these artist belonged to us, so alien to our parents. And from the overgrown fields of what would become the Windsor Shopping Center, the first All-Black, All Day radio station, WKND. At 5 a.m. you could hear their tag line " The mighty giant awakens" which in itself was thrilling. The Motown sounds that rocked every school dance and influenced The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Zeppelin and all the greatest blues inflused musicians.
The psychedelic ala Peter Max graphics began in San Francisco with early attempts to simulate acid trips .Pink Floyd's The Wall continued in this Max Crumb venue; anightmare trip with cartoonish imagines of The Wall. Our high school years became politicized by the draft, electronic music, experimental drugs,distrust of government ordered warfare and seeing combat vets hated for their service.
Meanwhile, gifted artists such as Max (Harry) Coyer moved to New York and began painting oversized canvases to international acclaim. Jane (Cumbo) Cunta producted "Botanica Erotica" in the spirit of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party. Each plate elegantly displayed the erotic regions of a woman's vagina. Patricia Bunk painted fantastic human figures, stretching the subconconscious through visions and landscapes.
Windsor High class of 1972 was a singularily gifted class. We were on the cusp of an earlier time exploding into an era no one could predict. School athletes, women and men, represented us with fair play and talent. David Bloom, Jon Sandburg, Jim Bleckel, Kathy Horner, were just some. We had clubs for drama, political science, music, language. One sad note is that those who served in the military were largely rejected by the larger community as wrong. It is more than unfortunate that those who risked their life for their country came back to shame and disgrace. The warriors were not responsible for ordering or maintaning the civil war in Vietnam. Their orders were to maintain the peace. But North Vietnamese and Vietcong wanted nothing to do with Americans. It was not our war. It was not our country. We didn't even know how to survive in the jungle, let alone employ gorilla tactics.
President Nixon's term began in 1969 and ended in 1974. He was found to have decieved the public (Watergate) and stepped down in shame. Saigon fell in 1975. American's intervention had cost many young American lives and habored a misturst in government which Watergate did not help.
Today, we are the elders of the community. Can we say that we have made the world a better place to live? The world unrest, the pandemic, global warming, starvation, murder in the streets, these events suggest life has become worse, not better. It is a time when personal connection is more valuable than ever. It is a time to love each other and be one of those who does no further harm to multiply the problems of the world, and maybe, if we are fortunate, if we can hold on to our humility, we may yet do no greater harm.
Kathleen Keena
I graduated in 1961 In central Wisconsin during an idyllic time for youngsters like me to struggle with growing up but not a lot of the other problems that came during your high school years. We had our problems with our parents over our music with Elvis, Little Richard, and Chubby Checker, among others putting action in the music and what our parents thought was too sexual. Even though we had invaders from the South constructing a gas pipeline that we called, the Pipeliners who added spice to our junior and senior years there were no Blacks in our small town and only one student who came in our junior year had any Native American blood. Even though our county had the largest population of Native Americans in the state.
But I welcomed everything that came after and was fortunate to participate in civil rights and the antiwar movement in college. I was also fortunate not to look down on returning veterans. I actually befriended a couple of them who had returned to our college on the G.I. Bill. And worked with some veterans years later who had come back to a better life in spite of the problems they may have had with PTSD and disliked by their high school classmates.
My partner often tells me that she regrets the day in 1975 when she was 17 and about to finish high school and going to pharmacy. Instead, she spent two years with her brothers in the wilderness growing sweet potatoes and chickens that she never killed to eat. And then, trying to escape six times. One time, stranded on a desert island by crooks who dropped them there, having the Vietcong rescue them from dying of thirst. But then putting them in jail for 30 days. Eventually, being sponsored by her brother who escaped by walking to Thailand and had shared that island and jail with her, She arrived here and took 17 years to get her citizenship.
In 1971, I returned on vacation to California. Staying with a friend whose adopted daughter that he thought I might be interested in. We attended her high school graduation. Unfortunately, a neighbor and good friend of hers, also a senior with epilepsy, had died from a seizure while swimming alone in his family swimming pool where she swam with him often. Putting a damper on her graduation. I watched as the senior class passed joints among the first two rows and the valedictorian gave a rousing speech about how their generation was going to change the world for the better.
Ron