The 60's for me and my family was a changing time, as there was so much turmoil, and my life would never be the same. This is what it was like for me.
There was turmoil in the 60’s.
While the 50’s were good years, for my husband and me, we went into the next decade with apprehension, fear, anxiety, and dismay at what was happening around the world. Maybe it was because television brought it right into our homes, and it became a part of our lives. As I think back to the 50’s, there wasn’t much in the way of fearful, earth shattering things that would bring fear into my life. I still love to recall the 50’s. They were my Golden Years!
Then came the 1960’s. Even though the 60’s were happy for me, with the birth of our second son, Derek, and our second daughter, Kristi, and moving into a bigger home not far from the old one which we had bought in 1954, a three-bedroom, one-bath 950 sq. ft. home for $9600, this was larger and had two baths, and cost $14,000, there were national events that rocked America. My world began to feel shaky, and I now see that those Golden Years had slipped into years of fear, assassinations of great men, race riots, drugs, wars, and other tragic things, and our lives began to change.
During the first few years the Russians shot down an American spy plane, and the Berlin Wall went up. Russia put warheads in Cuba, and there was fear of Russia attacking us. The kids had drills in school, climbing under desks for anticipated attacks. For a while we lived with the fear of war right in our own hometown. Cuba was so close! The Bay of Pigs was near!
That same year, Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and then we were really so scared, because we just knew it was the start of a war on America. It took us awhile to get over that tragedy. The Vietnam War began to escalate and the rest of the 1960’s was filled with demonstrations and opposition to the war. It wasn’t like World War II. There was a huge division over whether we should even be in the war. Families were split apart because of the differences.
Headlines were made in 1963, when Madeline Murray O’Hair won a Supreme Court decision to take prayer out of schools. It was also the year the Beatles invaded America from England. Everybody was talking about them. We saw them on the Ed Sullivan show and wondered what the fuss was about. By 1964, I had my happy little family, 4 kids by now, and didn’t really think this would touch them. They were still very young. I was very naïve.
The years went by and Marines were sent to Vietnam. The War there was escalating. Angry demonstrations went on all over America. But my oldest was only 13 and my baby was one-year old, and it just couldn’t affect me.
In 1966 Charles Whitman killed 12 people from the top of the tower at the University of Texas in Austin. We were on a mini vacation at Lake LBJ with friends and sat all day staring at the campus of the university with a man on the top of the tower shooting at all these people. That day is imbedded in my mind. As it was with seeing Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on television that Sunday morning in 1962, seeing this all before us, made the madness of hatred and murder so real, as it came right into our living room. That is what television had done. It seemed so personal.
When I think of the next few years, these years to me became the years of change for my family. No longer were we the happy, naïve, All American family, thinking only about school exams, and birthday parties, and church socials, and family picnics. It was the beginning of the years of drugs, rock heroes like Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and music groups called, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and the head lines were about people like them being arrested for drug charges, or dying of overdoses, and suicide. We tried to shield the bombarding of the music and its culture from our children, but it was impossible. They loved the music. They were growing up. I was there. My husband and I lived it!
When we tried to have a “teen canteen” on Friday nights at our church in San Antonio, it was successful for a while: a place where kids could come to a safe environment and dance, drink Cokes, and eat the cup cakes and cookies and chips we provided for free. But then people began to show up with drugs, and alcohol, they were smoking and drinking in the parking lot, and with the few adults we had, it was impossible to keep it a safe place. The smell of marijuana smoke drifting in from the church parking lot was too much for us. We couldn’t stop it. We had to close it down.
There were race riots all during the 60’s, and then we moved to Ft. Worth in 1968, because of a job change for Eddie. It was hard leaving our family, and all of our friends, our church, but we were excited about our new life in the Fort Worth area. That year ended with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Our country was still in turmoil. It seemed to be worse. Who was going to be next? The TV news ran the stories over and over again. And the things going on in the outside world was coming closer to home. My kids were growing up and would soon be adults.
We landed a man on the moon, but the headlines and news were also all about the teenagers attended the huge rock concert at Woodstock, New York with drugs and nudity rampant there, and later they demonstrated in Washington D.C., because of the War in Vietnam, 400,000 strong. That year, four colleges closed down because of anti war demonstrations and 4 students were killed at Kent State. Gone was the innocence of the ages.
By then, Trent was nearing graduation, and he and his dad began to have many arguments about Vietnam. He could be drafted. Our house became a mini-war zone. Trent and his long hair and “hippie” dress became a subject of many “discussions”, and once he was sent home from school for wearing a “Nehru” shirt, (a shirt with no collar). One of his friends wasn’t going to be allowed to go to the graduation and get his diploma unless he cut his hair - which was just below the ears. We finally quit arguing about the hair. Why was it such a big deal to us anyway? That was the year we decided that we would love our children no matter how they dressed. Maybe we didn’t approve, but we knew their hearts, and the person inside and that was what was important to us. We could give them guidance, but they had to make their own decisions as adults.
We had to go through the kids getting their drivers licenses, borrowing the car, hanging out with kids who did drugs, just knowing they were probably doing the same thing but hoping they were not. Many nights of waiting for a teenager to come home! Not sleeping until they got in the door. Many arguments over letting the youth of America “find themselves”, and the Hippie generation. We were living the Hippie generation!
Finally, things got a little easier. When Trent graduated, in 1970, his number came up for the draft, and he got a low number. He didn’t have to go to war! He was jubilant and so were we! My little brother Sammy was already in Viet Nam, and I wasn’t ready for my son to go, too. Trent made plans to go on to college to study pre-med. He left for college the fall of 1970. Julie was in high school, Derek and Kristi in elementary school. I wondered what the 70’s would hold for us. I did know that those naïve golden years of the 50’s would always be there to hang on to and remember. We got through the turmoil of the 60’s and I still had my sanity. We were not quite so innocent, and pure, and guiltless. But could I protect my children from the evil from the outside world? Probably not! I just needed to do the best I could.
Quite enlightening. I think every family has their 1960s period to go through. The 1960s were a period of great enlightenment for me. While there was some worry in my family, nothing like yours experienced. You are right about television. There's something in instant news that makes everyone feel that they are actually involved in it, even though they are not.
I think we are going through a 1960s like period today. News is more instant than ever and creeps into every pore of our bodies and minds almost as soon as it happens. There is a great schism between those that felt some security in the past and those that see a great future ahead and problems they want to tackle with all their heart and energy, curtailed.
Television shows like Archie Bunker were very good at humorously pointing out the challenges and differences. There may be television shows like that today doing the same thing.
Thank you for bringing back all those fond memories of times past. History is a great learning tool. There is no excuse for repeating our mistakes.
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There was turmoil in the 60’s.
