1968---

A HUGE year for me.  I was pregnant that year with my son who is now nearly 41 and childless, single, college grad yada yada.

That was the first year of zero population growth. The children who were born that year were statistically supposed to have a charmed adulthood, especially re: employment as there would not be nearly enough of THEM to fill all the jobs that America would have in 20-25 years.

WRONG!  My son graduated college right on time in the required 4years in 1990.  California was in a "recession." So this bright International Econ graduate was hard pressed to find a job.  As the years went by he lived out his dream of becoming a stock-broker just as the firms were merging.  Once he went to work on Monday following Thanksgiving only to learn that his branch of the particular firm was being closed on that very day and that he would be reporting to a branch much farther away.  He had only one month previously signed an apartment lease.

It has been in his era that concepts like "Independent Contractor"  and "contracting out"  have become familiar terms which might have a relationship with why we have soooo many uninsured Americans today. 

Maybe part of the reason my son remains single and childless have to do with watching the institutions that he was raised with collapse like:  

watching his father be "down-sized" out of corporate America when in his fifties; watching his parents separate and divorce in their forties; seeing no stability of health benefits as he progressed in his own chosen professions; choosing to leave stock brokering as he watched firms gouge little old ladies and take their homes while never revealing that they had an "position" in the stock of the day;  observing that the bar seemed to be always "just a bit higher for him and other people of color;"  watching his sister, also a college grad, be unable to obtain jobs that blondes with less credentials obtain easily.

The world has become extremely more unstable for him and his peers.  Perhaps it was always so, but our awareness of its instability with Proof is here now.  Police harrassment, sexual harrassment, racial and gender discrimination remain with us today albeit to a lesser degree.

I wonder whether or not the turbulence of the world, the assasination of Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy that year, the VietNam war,  all events that mattered to me had any effect upon the fetus that I was carrying to be born in October, 1968.

Barbara  Winn- Wilson

 I'm still trying to stop laughing over the quiz. Anyone who scored well on it could not possibly have been in Oakland in the 1968. They would have had to have been far more coherent that most of us were. Not to mention having enough money for a TV set. I missed the question regarding the come-from-behind victory of Oakland's hometown team! I was deeply involved in the radical antiwar movement and the drug culture in Oakland at that time. I was one of the partners in Jelly Roll Press who printed the "Park Here Anytime" signs and the infamous poster with the classic engraving of the storming of the Bastille, with a word balloon saying "The Park, 14 July". Which resulted in 1000s showing up with fence cutters, placards, etc to cut down the fence around People's Park and liberate it before the authorities had a clue what was happening. (these later events surrounding People's Park occurred in 1969, which was a continuum with 1968 in Oakland/Berkeley). Regarding 1968 key events, I got out of jail in San Diego County & moved to Chicago in time for the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination. And fled back to California just before the Democratic National Convention. Oh, and I did lousy on the quiz!

 I'll never forget 1968. I was an aspiring young singer performing at the Annual Strawberry Festival in Garden Grove, CA.  Bobby Kennedy was in a festival parade that went right by where I was on-stage singing. I remember stopping my song and pointing him out to the audience, who turned collectively as the parade rolled by with Bobby, Ethel and kids, John Glenn & Jesse Unruh. We all waved frantically and Bobby stood up, waved back and applauded! Two days later he was dead. Who could forget that.

OH,yeah: I'll always remember the year 1968. As that was the year I became a Father for the 1st time. Because I was so busy  struggleing to make a living for my Little Family at that time, I remember little else. I had been in the USAF from 62-65 an after returning to my HomeTown in California I had somehow met my first wife. She was only 17 to my 26yrs,but in reality we weren't too far apart in our maturity. I had graduated from the same local highschool she was attenting only  7yrs before. We married after she graduated,[I insisted]. She was 2mo's pregnet at the time,well 7mos' later-Jan 20 1968. Brian Patrick came into this world. It was a difficult birth as I remember. Small town Hospital, w/ local Dr's. not very unual. My Big Sis had lost her 1st baby in the same Hospital almost 10yrs before. I do contribute it to the lack of skills of our local Physicians,an the ill equiped Hospital we had then. But, at least we did have one then,which we do not have now. Talk about a Giant leap back in time..!  Anyway, B.P. picked a great time to enter this unsettled World,[not that he really had much choice,huh?]. He was an only child,an so spent much time by himself growing up. His favorite game was,,,[you guessed it],playing WAR...! After all,the only thing he ever saw in the evening News was the action in Viteman. As for myself,I remember seeing the shooting at the University an the killig of those students protesting the WAR. How sad that was...!!! The Space program was another BIG event in our lives then,thanks to JFK. Since I worked so many hours at the Phone Co. I had little time to contemplate what I did see on the evening News, and to me it was all to depressing to talk about. I only saw the bright eyes of my new Son.  He is gone now... he grew up to become one of those Special Few== A MARIINE. He spent 2yrs in on active duty,then in the reserves for another few. Sad to say that he never lost the urge to take chances. Only one time too many. He did so love that "i-rock camero",an pushed it to the limit. That was ,without a doubt, the saddest day of my Life. But, yes I certianly do remember the year 1968.                                                                                                                                  RGN

It's funny I should get the email notice about this.  Last night I was recording some VHS tapes to DVD and one was "1968, 25th Anniversary", a Fox TV special from 1993.  It was hosted by Martin Sheen.

I was in my first (full) year of college.  Calculus and Economics in the mornings and Spades, Hearts and Pitch in the afternoons.  The weekends were poker with my friends.  I was living at home, my purple 1963 Chevy Impala had burned up (thanks to my brother) and I was then driving a 1949 Volvo (picture a VW Bug with the front end stretched out about 6 feet).  My musical tastes had just changed from Vivaldi and Beethoven (9 years of studying the violin) to Tommy James and the Shondels and Steppenwolf.  Steppenwolf's 2nd album was such a "trip", I wore out the 8-track it was on.   I just had to learn to play "Chrimson and Clover" and "Born to be Wild", so I  bought a cheap electric guitar and amp.  That was one major change.  The other was 6 months later (in 1969) when my grades bottomed out and my draft number came up.  I had a choice to join the Air Force or get drafted and walk the jungles of Viet Nam carrying a gun.  Even though I joined the Air Force, 6 months later I landed at Phan Rang AB in Viet Nam.  I was a reciprocating engine mechanic - Air Force term for a rotary airplane engine with a propeller.  I grew up in quite a hurry there.  I was real sorry I had to miss Woodstock.

So, 1968 was probably the biggest turning point in my life.  It was interesting that I didn't partake in any drugs then (besides beer), but I can't say it didn't happen after coming back from Viet Nam.  Fortunately for me, getting married in 1974 to my loving wife got me straightened out from that.  I still play guitar and violin when I can find the time.

It was the best of times in the worst of times.  I graduated from high school in May of 1968 at a school that had just integrated my junior year.  And I think that is what struck me most.  I believed in the message of Dr. King  and had since I was 7 and asked my mother why there were only 3 restrooms at the Birmingham Zoo---MEN, WOMEN, and COLORED.  I had played with our maid's daughter in the front yard when I was nine, in spite of my mother's admonition to play with her in the back where we would be less visible.  I had said "ma'am" to her mother as I had been taught to say all adults.  I  really did not see race.   But this was my first opportunity to publically walk the walk.  My chemistry teacher asked me if I minded  taking the "colored girl"  (the polite term) as my lab partner in Chemistry.  I told her straight out that I was not prejudiced.   That was my junior year, but by my senior,  there were 13 black students  (up from 7 ) who had been transferred to my school and most were in the band. The  The hippies and the black guys started a jazz combo and desegregation came, as it often does, through music and musicians.

In the fall I started college and by the fall of 1969 I had transferred to the University of Alabama, (Roll Tide Roll--home of the legendary Bear Bryant) and was a full fledged Jesus Freak, a Christian hippie.  Some people say I still am.

 I grew up in California.  You had to be 21 to vote back then, so, when I turned 21 on April 6, I ran right down to the post office and registered.  As it turned out, the California primary was scheduled for June 8 (?), and you had to register 60 days before any election to vote.  That fit just fine.  I was a college student with no idea of who was running for what, but soon found myself involved in the college student support for RFK on campus.  I have to admit that one reason for my involvement was that the best looking girls were also RFK supporters.  The young republicans were the plain janes on campus.  Anyway, I got more involved in passing out buttons, ringing doorbells, and marching through the streets in the days before the primary.  A group of us found our way to downtown L.A. on primary night, and barely got into the Ambassador Hotel -- several hundred feet from the podium.  But it didn't matter, because we were there with the winning team.  We heard the acceptance speech, the final words will be in my memory forever: "Now, it's on to Chicago, and let's win there!"  We were just about to leave when all hell broke loose.  Someone was screaming for a doctor.  Some were starting to cry.  It was several minutes before the rumors and the facts started to make sense.  The next day I was scheduled for my pre-draft physical (I had repeated a couple classes and lost my 2-S defferment), and on the way to the AFEES, the bus passed RFK's hospital where a huge American flag was hanging from the side of the building.  Out of all the things that have happened to me throughout my life, that memory always comes back when I see or hear anything concerning 1968.

It was the Third of June, 1968, that I was drafted, and I'll never forget that date because Bobbi Gentry sang her smash hit about BillyJoeMcCallister and that crazy bridge where everyone knew she through something off but could never know for sure but we all had our own little insights, such as a baby or an aborted fetus, or simply lost innocence.

I wanted to stop the world, stop the marching, stop the war a few days later when I heard whispers through the ranks of the newly indoctrinated army recruits in Fort Bragg. "Bobby Kennedy was killed," they said. Over and over the message was passed, but we could do nothing. We were in formation, just having our **** chewed out by some drill sergeant about talking in the ranks, and only the real brave or the most saddened ones repreated that message, "Bobby Kennedy was killed." 

That event shook up my world and paved the way for Vietnam combat as an infantry platoon leader who still has flashbacks today from the trauma of war. But nothing that happened after June 1968 could compare to the feeling of loss and sadness on hearing what many of us believed to be the best hope for our salvation out of Vietnam -- the death of Bobby. 

Michael J Contos