April 30, 1975: The Fall of Saigon

April 30, 1975, 50 years ago: The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, representing "the Democratic Republic of Vietnam," a.k.a. North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF, or "Viet Cong") capture the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, a.k.a. South Vietnam, Saigon. The Vietnam War is finally over: Vietnam is united, and it is Communist.

The capture of the city was preceded by Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of almost all American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, more than 2 years after combat operations there had ended; along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians who had been associated with the Republic of Vietnam regime.

The sight of civilians climbing a staircase in a desperate attempt to reach the last helicopter, on the roof of the American Embassy, became a symbol of America's 1st true military defeat. The War of 1812 may have been a stalemate, but tends to get treated like a victory. There was no way to spin the Vietnam War as a win for America, or even a draw.

In 1976, the National Assembly of the united Socialist Republic of Vietnam, in the national capital of Hanoi, which had been the capital of North Vietnam, renamed Saigon for the founder of North Vietnam: Hồ Chí Minh City.

Today, with the country still a corrupt one-party state, but embracing free-market reforms since 1986, and thus Communist in name only, Hồ Chí Minh City is home to 9.4 million people, more than New York or London. And the former U.S. Embassy is home to the country's Oil Ministry.

 

February 12, 1955: The 1st American "Advisors" Are Sent to Vietnam

February 12, 1955, 70 years ago: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the 1st U.S. "advisors" to South Vietnam. This comes 9 months after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu saw the Communist Viet Minh defeat the French Army, and 7 months after the Geneva Conference divided the country into a Communist North and a "free" South, just like Korea.

These "advisors" -- some of them U.S. Army officers, some of them CIA officers, some of them civilian diplomats -- were supposed to guide South Vietnam toward 3 things: Governmental stability, economic stability, and freedom.

To the American public, most of whom barely knew of Vietnam's existence in those early days of television -- "Indochina" was still the more common name, but that also encompassed Cambodia, Laos, Burman (now Myanmar), Thailand, and Peninsular Malaysia -- let alone could find it on a world map, freedom was the most important part.

But, in all fairness, it would have been a miracle if the country were stable enough to hold together, let alone enough to hold off attacks -- either military or spying -- from North Vietnam.

Since the Vietnam War finally came to an end in 1975, Republicans have usually blamed the American role in the war on President Lyndon B. Johnson, for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 and his subsequent escalation of the war; or on President John F. Kennedy, who increased the U.S. presence in Vietnam in 1961, '62 and '63. JFK and LBJ were both Democrats.

These Republicans tend to ignore the fact that Republican Richard Nixon, after being elected President in 1968, largely on the basis of saying he would end the war, only took the last U.S. combat troops out after being sworn in for a 2nd term in 1973.

Let the record show that the 1st President to send U.S. troops to Vietnam was a Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower. And his Vice President was Richard Nixon.

Veterans' Day, Or, As Donald Trump Calls It...

The Veterans' Memorial in my hometown,

East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Well, today is November 11, the anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, known as Armistice Day. Also, Veterans' Day.

Or, as Donald Trump calls it, "Losers and Suckers Day."

* 1775-83, War of the American Revolution: 217,000 American men served, and 25,000 were killed. The last surviving veteran of the war died in 1866.

* 1812-15, War of 1812: 286K served, 20K killed. Last died in 1905.

* 1846-47, Mexican-American War: 78K served, 13,283 killed. Last died in 1929.

* 1861-65, American Civil War: If we count the side that fought to get out, and stay out, of the United States as "Americans," then, 3.2 million served, 625K killed. Last died in 1956.

* 1898-1902, Spanish-American War & Philippine Campaign (really, one war): 307K served, 6,642 killed. Last died in 1993.

* 1917-18, World War I: 4.7M served, 116,516 killed. Last died in 2011.

* 1941-45, World War II: 16.1M served, 405,399 killed, 119K are believed to still be alive.

* 1950-53, Korean War: 5.7M served, 36,516 killed, about 1M still alive.

* 1954-75, Vietnam War: 8.7M served, 58,220 killed (officially), 6.3M still alive.

* 1990-91, Iraq War I: 2.2M served, 2,094 killed.

* 2001-21, Afghan War: 1.4M served, 7,277 killed (4,281 of them after 9/11).

* 2003-11, Iraq War II: 300K served, 4,431 killed.

Peace is better than war. But justice is more important than peace. The best way to honor those who fight for us is to fight for them -- including after they come home, dead and alive alike.

And, unlike our country's commander-in-chief-elect, Donald Trump, does, to never, ever consider them "losers" and "suckers."

Trump's fans like to believe that they are operating, to borrow the title of a Bob Dylan song, "With God On Our Side." But remember the last line of that song: "If God's on our side, He'll stop the next war."

September 7, 1964: The Daisy Spot Is Aired

September 7, 1964, 60 years ago: The most famous political advertisement ever runs. It only runs the once, but it was enough.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 scared the world. The following year, a public opinion survey showed that 90 percent of respondents believed that a nuclear war was possible, and 38 percent thought it was likely.

Having resolved the Missile Crisis without going to nuclear or any other kind of war, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev worked toward a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, that took effect in September 1963. This seemed like a big step forward. Then Kennedy was assassinated in November, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became President. A Democrat like Kennedy, he immediately took steps to run for a full term in 1964.

The Republican Party nominated Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona for President. An archconservative, he and his supporters didn't want Communism "contained" to where it already was, they wanted it "rolled back."

In hindsight, LBJ is considered -- not completely fairly -- the man who started the Vietnam War, but it was the Republican Administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (with Nixon as Vice President) that started the U.S. role in what had been a civil war in Vietnam. Republicans supported that war all the way, to the point where, in 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush ripped Democratic nominee Bill Clinton for having opposed the war, 17 years after the last U.S. troops left -- and it made Bush look ridiculous, and it was one of the reasons (although hardly the biggest reason) that Clinton won.

But in the Summer of 1964, most Americans weren't hearing much about Vietnam. Many couldn't find it on a map. It didn't look like it would be a major issue.

But Goldwater had been 1 of 14 Senators to vote against the Test Ban Treaty. And he gave an interview suggesting that he would give U.S. Army field commanders the right to use small, "tactical" nuclear weapons in combat. He went out of his way to say, "I don't think we would ever use them." But that's not what people remembered: They were too shocked at the suggestion to "see" the denial.

And so, the Johnson campaign took Goldwater's slogan, "In your heart, you know he's right," and twisted it. "Yeah, far right." "In your guts, you know he's nuts." And a campaign pin with a red button and a finger pointed right at it, with the inscription, "In your heart, you know he might."

The Goldwater campaign struck back, showing a group of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, until their voices are drowned out by a voice pretending to be Khrushchev: Of course, Khrushchev didn't say it in English -- as far as I can tell, he didn't speak it -- but the actor quoted him directly: "We will bury you" and "Your children will be Communists!"

So the LBJ campaign worked with the famed advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (now known as DDB Worldwide Communications Group) to make a devastating ad. Written by Tony Schwartz, it is officially titled, "Peace, Little Girl." It is on black-and-white film, and shows a 3-year-old girl, sitting in Highbridge Park in Upper Manhattan, with the Henry Hudson Parkway behind her. She's pulling the petals off a daisy, hence it became known as "The Daisy Spot" or "The Daisy Ad."

As she pulls the petals, and birds chirp, she counts, not quite right, and this was left in because it made her seem more innocent: "One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine... " And then she runs out of petals, and says, "Nine" one more time. Then, a heavily-echoed adult male voice yells, "Ten!" And starts counting down. When he gets to eight, the girl looks up, as if she hears him. Her image freezes, and the camera zooms in on her right eye.

As her iris fills the screen, the countdown reaches, "Zero!" And there's a flash of light. It's a nuclear explosion. And the voice of LBJ is heard, saying, "These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." The screen then goes black except for these words, in white: "VOTE FOR PRESIDENT JOHNSON ON NOVEMBER 3." And a 3rd male voice -- I can find no record of whose it was, and the LBJ Presdiential Library responded to my request by saying it was probably a Doyle Dane Bernbach employee -- says, ominously, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay at home."

The ad aired only once. The program chosen was The NBC Monday Movie, in this case a Biblical epic, the 1951 film David and Bathsheba, starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. (This was before ABC began showing Monday Night Football.) The time chosen was 9:50 PM, a time at which it would be expected that children would be in bed, so they would be less likely to be scared by it, but parents would still be watching, and would imagine their children in place of the little girl.

White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers later told LBJ, who wanted it shown again, that it accomplished its purpose in one showing. He was right: Goldwater had been gaining in the polls, but the ad finished him, even though it never even mentioned his name.

Republicans blaming the media for an election defeat, or for a bad poll that suggests an upcoming election defeat, began 2 years earlier, when Richard Nixon lost his election for Governor of California. But now, conservatives blamed the media for distorting what Goldwater meant by his statement on nuclear weapons: The common cry was, "Don't quote what he says, say what he means!"

Would such an ad running today work? Probably not: The huge number of channels available today would mean that fewer people would see it -- at first. But by the next morning, the news channels would have shown it, and, unlike in 1964, analyzed the hell out of it. This would include exposing its flaws, real and perceived. And somebody supporting the targeted candidate would be interviewed, explaining that it totally distorts the candidate's position.

But in 1964, with NBC having a much larger market share, and there being no CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc., the one-time showing, without quick comeback analysis, allowed the ad to make a far greater impression. And it totally worked: Goldwater was seen as a "mad bomber," while Johnson was seen as "the peace candidate."

On Election Day, November 3, Johnson set a new record with 61.1 percent of the popular vote. Goldwater won only 6 States: His home State of Arizona (barely), and 5 Southern States, not so much happy with him for having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as they were angry with Johnson for supporting and signing it.

Few people yet realized just how deep America was into Vietnam's civil war. By the time the 1968 election cycle began in 1967, a joke was making the rounds: "I was told that if I voted for Goldwater, we would be at war, and there would be riots in the streets. Well, I voted for Goldwater, and we are at war, and we do have riots in the streets."

Johnston dropped out of the race for a 2nd full term in 1968, and died in 1973. Goldwater returned to the Senate in the 1968 election, and served 3 more terms, living until 1998. Tony Schwartz, creator of the ad, went on to create Presidential campaign ads for Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy. He also hosted a radio show on WNYC, New York City's public radio station, and lived until 2008.

The girl in the ad? Her name was Monique Corzilius, and she and her family lived in Pine Beach, on the New Jersey shore, across the Toms River from the town of the same name. Her mother took her into New York to audition for commercials. Most commercials from that era are forgotten, but the Daisy Spot lives on. Her parents were paid $105 for the ad -- a shade over $1,000 in 2022 money.

In 1975, the Corzilius family moved to Philippsbourg, France. In 1983, at age 22, Monique married Manuel Luiz, a Portuguese citizen, and they moved to Phoenix, Arizona -- ironically, Goldwater's hometown. She became a human resources supervisor at a bank, and claimed she never saw the ad until searching for it on the Internet in the 2000s.

In 2016, she appeared in a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton, showing Donald Trump acting like a lunatic on the subject of nuclear weapons. She said, "The fear of nuclear war that we had as children, I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again. And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary." She even closed the ad with nearly the same words that the 1964 ad used: "Vote for Hillary Clinton on November 8th. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." This time, it didn't work, and Trump became President anyway.

As of September 7, 2024, she is still alive, age 63.

August 4, 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

USS Maddox

August 4, 1964, 60 years ago: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurs. What happened? That is still in dispute.

On August 2, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol, was approached by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox fired warning shots, and the North Vietnamese boats attacked with torpedoes and machine gun fire. In the ensuing engagement, one U.S. aircraft, which had been launched from aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, was damaged, all of the North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed, with six more wounded. There were no U.S. casualties. According to its report, the Maddox was "unscathed except for a single bullet hole from a Vietnamese machine gun round."

Two days later, on August 4, another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, joined Maddox on its mission. That evening, the ships opened fire on radar and sonar returns that had been preceded by communications intercepts which U.S. forces claimed meant an attack was imminent. The commander of the Maddox task force, Captain John Herrick, reported that the ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese boats -- when in fact, there were no North Vietnamese boats present.

While Herrick soon reported doubts regarding the task force’s initial perceptions of the attack, the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on wrongly interpreted National Security Agency communications intercepts to conclude that the attack was real.

While doubts regarding the perceived second attack have been expressed since 1964, it was not until years later that it was shown conclusively never to have happened. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War -- the title taken from a German expression for the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations -- Robert S. McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, admitted that the August 2 attack on the Maddox happened; but that the August 4 attack, for which LBJ authorized retaliation, never happened.

The outcome of these two confrontations was the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted LBJ the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "Communist aggression." The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces to South Vietnam, and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

The Resolution passed the House of Representatives unanimously, 416-0. It passed the Senate by a vote of 88-2. While 10 Senators were not present for the vote, the only ones to vote against it were Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon, both Democrats. (Morse, first elected in 1944 as a Republican, became an independent in 1952 because of disgust over McCarthyism, and switched to the Democrats so he could be in the majority and chair committees after the Democratic takeover following in the 1954 elections.)

On the NBC TV series The West Wing, John Spencer played Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff, and a U.S. Air Force veteran who had been shot down over North Vietnam in 1970, and barely rescued before he could be taken prisoner. In one 2001 episode, where a military operation has gone badly, he tells President Jed Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, that if he could go back in time to any moment, it would be to August 4, 1964, to tell Johnson, "Mr. President, don't do it."

But Johnson was running for re-election. All the polls showed he would easily beat the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. But he was concerned that, if he let the Gulf of Tonkin Incident go, he would be seen as "weak" and "soft on Communism." Instead of saying, "Let them say that, the American people know I'm handling things well," he panicked, and sent America down a path that led to nearly 60,000 deaths in 8 years -- around 36,000 by the time he left office on January 20, 1969 -- taking all his accomplishments, and they were many, some of them changing things tremendously for the better, and giving them the rebuttal, "Yes, but... "

After leaving office, he told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was working on his authorized biography, "I knew from the start that, if I left the woman I loved, the Great Society, in order to fight that bitch of a war, then I would lose everything. All my programs. All my hopes. All my dreams." He had blown it, and he knew it.

Greuning and Morse were both defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1968: Gruening by 2,000 votes, Morse by 3,500.

USS Maddox, launched in 1944 during World War II, was the 3rd ship named for Captain William Maddox, U.S. Marine Corps, a hero of the Battle of Santa Clara in the Mexican-American War in 1847. It remained in service until 1972, was sold to Taiwan, and scrapped in 1985. Her Captain, John Herrick, lived until 1997. His brother, Curtis Herrick, was a General in the U.S. Army.

USS Turner Joy, launched in 1958, was named for an Admiral who served as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. Only this 1 ship, as yet, has been named for him. Since 1991, she has been a museum ship berthed at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the Seattle suburb of Bremerton, Washington. Her commanding officer, Commander Robert C. Barnhart Jr., lived until 2012.

1963: The Last Summer, Part II

The Summer of 1963 was a beginning for some, and an ending for many more. America would never quite be so young again as it was that year.

On July 1, ZIP Codes came into use. Most towns weren't big enough to need more than one postal zone. For those that were, there were simple numbers, one or two digits, starting in 1943. For example: From the time he was born in 1943 until he went off to war in 1965, my father lived in the Forest Hill Section of the North Ward of Newark. People living in the North Ward would write their addresses as "Newark 4, New Jersey." With ZIP Codes, it became "Newark, NJ 07104." Note that the 4 became the last digit. An address of "New York 17, NY" became "New York, NY 10017."

Outside cities, ZIP Codes were arranged alphabetically. For example, I grew up in East Brunswick, in Central New Jersey. Our ZIP Code was, and remains, 08816. A town neighboring us both geographically and alphabetically, Edison, had 08817, 08818 and 08820, with 08819 available for overspill. (So far, despite Edison's huge growth, it hasn't been needed.) Oddly, they also use 08837. 

Of all the changes that happened in America in the 1960s, and particularly during the Administration of President John F. Kennedy, two that were huge parts of our culture, but are rarely talked about now, are the institutions of Area and ZIP Codes.

On July 2, baseball pitchers Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves faced off against each other in a National League game that one author would later call "the greatest game ever pitched." Marichal was 24 years old. Spahn was 42. Tied 0-0 after 9 innings, the game was won in the 16th by the Giants on a home run by Willie Mays.

On July 5, actress Edie Falco was born. And a delegation from the People's Republic of China, led by Prime Minister Zhou Enali, departed from Beijing on a train bound for Moscow, to attend talks in an effort to repair the poor relations between the Chinese Communists and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The talks, intended to mend the Sino-Soviet split, broken down on July 14, when the Soviets published a rebuttal to Chinese charges that the Soviets had departed from the Communist ideology.

On July 10, the all-white University of South Carolina was ordered to admit its first African-American student, Henri Monteith, by order of U.S. District Judge J. Robert Martin. On the same day, Judge Martin ordered the desegregation of all 26 of South Carolina's State Parks.

On July 11, in South America, there was a military coup in Ecuador, and the Argentine ferry Ciudad de Asunción sank in the River Plate between the capital cities of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. Hockey Hall-of-Famer Al MacInnis and actress Lisa Rinna were born.

On July 12, 16-year-old Pauline Reade was abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester, England. It was the 1st of their 5 "Moors Murders." On July 13, Kenny Johnston was born. He played the Flash in the 1997 Justice League of America movie. Also born that day was Anthony "Spud" Webb, who became an NBA slam-dunk artists despite being only 5-foot-6. Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen was born on July 15, and American actress Phoebe Cates on July 16.

At the height of the Summer, "Wildwood Days" was a Top 20 hit. Wildwood is on the Jersey Shore, and attracts people from New York City, 155 miles to the north; and Philadelphia, 90 miles to the northwest. It was sung by a Philadelphia-born, -bred and -based doo-wop singer, Bobby Rydell.

On July 22, Sonny Liston retained the Heavyweight Championship of the World, by winning a rematch with the man from whom he took the title, Floyd Patterson. Both fights ended in 1st-round knockouts. Liston is now on a collision course with challenger Cassius Clay. Clay would take the title from him in 1964, and change his name to Muhammad Ali. Also on July 22, actor Rob Estes was born.

On July 24, the American Legion-sponsored Boys Nation event was held at the White House. JFK shook hands with all of the delegates, including an Arkansas delegate soon to turn 17: Bill Clinton. Clinton would be elected President in 1992. Also on July 24, Karl Malone, a future member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, was born. On July 26, an earthquake in Skopje (then in Yugoslavia, now the capital of North Macedonia) killed 1,800 people.

On July 30, the Soviet newspaper Izvestia reported that British diplomat Kim Philby, who had disappeared on January 23, had been given asylum in Moscow, as a double agent. And actress Lisa Kudrow, famous for her role on the 1990s sitcom Friends, was born. So was another Basketball Hall-of-Famer, Chris Mullin.

*

Artis Leon Ivey Jr., eventually to become the rapper known as Coolio, was born on August 1. On August 2, the Green Bay Packers were upset in the Chicago College All-Star Game. It would be the last time that the defending NFL Champions lost the game, which was played from 1934 to 1963. On August 3, Phil Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, shot and killed himself. His wife, Katherine Graham, inherited the paper, and ran it better. The same day, Metallica singer James Hetfield was born.

Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who became the 1st Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, was born on August 4. On August 5, Mark Strong was born. The bald English actor became known for playing villains. That day, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home (soon to become Prime Minister), and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

On August 7, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave birth to a son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. The boy was born with bad lungs, and died just 2 days later. Supposedly, the tragedy brought the President and the First Lady closer together.

On August 8, a Royal Mail train headed from Glasgow to London is robbed at Bridego Railway Bridge in Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, about 45 miles northwest of London. It becomes known as the Great Train Robbery. A gang of 16 men, led by Bruce Reynolds, without using firearms, escaped with £2.61 million pounds -- about £70 million in 2023, or $88 million with the current exchange rate --  mostly in £1 and £5 notes. The police soon cracked the case, and most of the gang was convicted, with the ringleaders were sentenced to 30 years in prison.

On August 9, Lee Harvey Oswald and 3 Cuban men were arrested in New Orleans after fighting. Each man spent the night in jail, and was released. Singer Whitney Houston was born that same day. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee died on August 10. He had launched hearings into organized crime, and run for President in 1952 and 1956, becoming the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the latter year.

Valerie Plame, CIA Agent turned 2003 cause célèbre, was born on August 13. On August 14, playwright Clifford Odets died, and actress Emmanuelle Beart was born. On August 15, convicted murderer Eddie Mays was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. He remains the last person executed in the State of New York. Actor John Stamos was born on August 19. The future King Mohammed VI of Morocco was born on August 21, and singer Tori Amos on August 22.

August 24 saw American John Pennel become the 1st pole vaulter to top 17 feet. It also saw the first games played in the Bundesliga (meaning "federal league"), the 1st professional soccer league in Germany. Due to its culture of sports clubs, Germany was well behind the rest of Europe in starting pro soccer. That would change, as Bayern Munich and, to lesser extents, clubs such as Borussia Mönchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund, and Hamburger SV would become among the best in Europe.

*

W.E.B. Du Bois, once a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement, died in exile in the African nation of Ghana, at the age of 95, on August 27. On August 28, the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It was organized by union leader A. Philip Randolph and organizer Bayard Rustin.

Mahalia Jackson, then America's greatest living singer of gospel music, sang "How I Got Over." Marian Anderson, who had sung at the Lincoln Memorial in an Easter concert before 75,000 in 1939, sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Joan Baez sang "We Shall Overcome," Bob Dylan sang, "Only a Pawn in Their Game," and, then a couple, together they sang Bob's song "When the Ship Comes In." Peter, Paul and Mary sang "If I Had a Hammer" and Bob's song "Blowin' in the Wind." Odetta sang "I'm On My Way."

Other celebrities on hand: Singers Josephine Baker, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne, Judy Garland and Bobby Darin; actors Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, James Garner, Robert Ryan, Rita Moreno, married couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, married couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and, surprising many people only old enough to remember him as a conservative and a gun-rights advocate, Charlton Heston; novelist James Baldwin; and baseball trailblazer Jackie Robinson.

But it would be remembered for the speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Early in his speech, he said some things that many white Americans did not want to hear -- and probably still don't, because they are largely still true:

In a sense, we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

A little later, he said, confronting the differing challenges of South and North:

We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote, and a colored person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

When he seemed to be wrapping up, Mahalia Jackson remembered a speech he had given a few weeks earlier, at Cobo Hall in Detroit, in which he spoke of a dream he had. She said, "Martin, tell them about the dream." He did:

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that, one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that, one day, out in the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that, one day, even the state of Mississippi, a State sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will, one day, live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

He went on a little longer with this point. And his closing was unforgettable: 

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But, not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

"My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died. Land of thy pilgrims' pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring."

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every State and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Watching the speech on television, President John F. Kennedy told the others in the room, "He's damn good." Afterward, Dr. King was among the figures from the demonstration invited to meet him at the White House.

*

On August 30, the Moscow-Washington hotline began operations, as the U.S. Department of Defense made a one-sentence announcement to the world press: "The direct communication link between Washington and Moscow is now operational." Because the spoken word could be misunderstood, the hot line was actually a link of teletype machines, rather than the red telephone commonly depicted in television and film.

On the same day, the modern audio cassette tape, and the tape recorder that used it, were both introduced to the public by the Philips Company. For the next 30 years, the "cassette" would be the standard form of portable recorded music. Kansas City Chiefs rookie Stone Johnson, a former U.S. Olympic sprinter, sustained a fractured vertebra in his neck during a kickoff return in a preseason game against the Houston Oilers. He would die on September 8 as a result of the injury. Actors Michael Chiklis and Mark Strong were born.

On August 31, French cubist painter Georges Braque died. On September 1, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold was published by David John Moore Cornwell, under the pen name John le Carré. He had worked for both MI5 (Britain’s FBI) and MI6 (its CIA). The novel became a landmark of spy fiction, and was filmed in 1965.

Also on that day, Avengers #1 was published, Marvel Comics' attempt to copy DC Comics’ Justice League of America. Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp took on Thor’s brother Loki. In Avengers #3, the Hulk went rogue, and the others went go after him. In Avengers #4, Captain America was thawed out.

September 2, Monday, was Labor Day, the symbolic, if not meteorological, end of Summer. At 6:30 PM U.S. Eastern Time, Walter Cronkite, who had become the anchor of The CBS Evening News the year before, began the broadcast by saying, "Good evening from our CBS newsroom in New York, on this, the first broadcast of network television's first half-hour news program." Cronkite would remain the anchor until 1981.

The first show included a prerecorded segment of Cronkite's interview with President John F. Kennedy, live from the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, on Massachusetts' Cape Cod. He asked JFK about his 1964 re-election campaign (on who his opponent would be, he said, "There are a good many of them"), civil rights, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the U.S. role in the civil role in Vietnam.

JFK said something that has led people to think that, eventually, he would have pulled U.S. troops out: "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Viet-Nam, against the Communists."

But, next, he said something that made others think that he would have kept the troops in for the long hault: "All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away. We took all this -- made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate -- we may not like it -- in the defense of Asia.

Over the months of September, October and November 1963, JFK would deepen the U.S. effort in Vietnam. Would he have continued that in 1964, knowing that he had to get re-elected? Would he have taken a 1964 win as a mandate to keep it going? Would he have taken a 1964 win as a mandate to get out of Vietnam safely, since he could tell people he was "chickening out" that the people were behind him?

Because of the events of November 22, 1963, we will never know.

*

Jacqueline McDonnell made a living as a backup singer, and had one hit record, under the name Robin Ward: It was titled "Wonderful Summer," but it wasn't released until November. In December, it reached the Top 20. Perhaps, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, people had already begun to be nostalgic for an era that had been lost.

A few weeks later, The Beatles came, and people began to feel good again.

May 4, 1970: The Kent State Massacre

May 4, 1970, 50 years ago: A surreal day. On the campus of Kent State University, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland in Kent, Ohio, a demonstration was held, protesting President Richard Nixon's decision to expand the Vietnam War to Cambodia. This would have disastrous consequences for Southeast Asia, both short-term and long-term.

Ohio National Guardsmen, reacting to demonstrators throwing rocks at them, opened fire. They shot 13 students, resulting in 4 deaths and 1 permanent paralysis.

It had been 11 weeks since the convictions of five of the Chicago Seven, although those convictions were overturned 2 years later. Nixon thought sending U.S. troops into Cambodia would aid the war effort.

This seemed to break his promise that he was winding the war down. This led to protests around the country, and led not only to the aforementioned Kent State Massacre, and another shooting that killed 2 at Jackson State University in Mississippi the following week. But since Jackson State was a "historically black college/university" (HBCU), it got less attention from the mainstream media.

Like the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and the police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 28, 1968, this was a day when America seemed to turn on America. Truth, justice, logic, equality, nothing seemed to matter except the selfish desires of the attackers. (UPDATE: We can now add the Insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.)

On May 8, 4 days after the Kent State Massacre, construction workers marched down 5th Avenue, in support of Nixon and the war, even attacking people protesting them near City Hall and Wall Street. It became known as the Hard Hat Demonstration: Blue-collar guys marching in New York, in support of the war, and against civil rights. The conservative backlash to a decade of liberalism was well and truly on. The day of Martin Luther King was done, and the day of Archie Bunker had begun.

*

Allison Krause, born on April 23, 1951 in Cleveland, was one of the demonstrators. So was Jeffrey Miller, born on March 28, 1950 in Plainview, Long Island, New York. Not among the demonstrators, merely spectators, were Sandy Scheuer, born on August 11, 1949 in nearby Youngstown, Ohio; and William K. Schroeder, born on July 20, 1950 in Cincinnati and grew up in nearby Lorain, Ohio.

John Filo took the most famous photograph of the event, at the top of this post. He was then 22, just a few months older than the oldest of the victims, and working for the newspaper now known as the Valley News Dispatch in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo, and is still alive.

The photo shows Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Miller's body. She was just 14, from the Miami suburb of Opa-Locka, Florida, and had run away from home, saying her home life was "volatile." Upon arriving in Kent, she had become friends with Sandy Scheuer, and also with Alan Canfora, who was wounded, but survived.

She had just met Miller, moments before the shooting started. She could very easily have been one of the victims. Filo took the picture because she was the only one who seemed to be going over to Miller and showing any concern over him. She remembered yelling, "Doesn't anyone see what just happened here? Why is no one helping him?"

She got out of Kent, hoping the authorities wouldn't find her. She got as far as Indianapolis, but someone recognized her from the photo, and tipped off a reporter from The Indianapolis Star. He wanted to interview her. She agreed, in the hope that he would give her enough bus fare to get to California and "disappear."

He didn't: He reported her to the police, who sent her back to Opa-Locka. Governor Claude Kirk of Florida publicly called her a "dissident communist" and "part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators that is responsible for the students' death." Many others blamed her for the deaths, and many people sent her death threats, one accusing her of "sleeping with all those Negroes and dope fiends." Even some people who opposed the war were angry with her, for becoming famous despite not being part of the protest, or the antiwar movement in general.

At 22, she moved to Las Vegas, got married, and worked in a casino. At 39, she got divorced, and moved back to Florida, earning her high school diploma and an associate degree, becoming a respiratory therapist. With retroactive irony, she worked in the spa at Trump National Doral Miami.

She is now 64, and lives in the Florida Everglades. She has returned to Kent State on the milestone anniversaries of the event, as an invited speaker. She has met Filo, and no longer blames his photo for ruining her life. She retains her social conscience, and spoke out against the murder of George Floyd, 50 years later to the month.

Al Albert was a student at Kent State on May 4, 1970. His brother, Marv Albert, was a broadcaster for the New York Knicks, the New York Jets, and the New York Rangers. Marv had heard of the massacre, and, not knowing the names of the dead and the wounded, had made some calls to find out if his brother was all right.

He had to broadcast the 1st half of Game 5 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden not knowing if his brother was alive or dead; fine, emotionally shaken up, in a hospital, or in a morgue 432 miles to the west.

Finally, during halftime, he was handed a note saying that Al had been reached, and was fine, that he was nowhere near the demonstration. The Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 107-100, despite Willis Reed being injured. The Lakers took advantage of Reed's absence to win Game 6. On May 8, at The Garden, Reed managed to come out to play Game 7, and the Knicks won their 1st Championship.

On May 21, 1970, just 17 days after the massacre, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young recorded "Ohio" at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. Young wrote the lyrics: 

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming

We're finally on our own

This Summer, I hear the drumming:

Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it

Soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been done long ago

What if you knew her

and found her dead on the ground?

How can you run when you know?

Mainstream America knew, and, at least at the beginning, ran. Or, at least, shrugged its shoulders and walked away. Mary Ann Vecchio stayed, and tried to help. And millions of others, far from the scene, realized that the war had been brought to them, without their consent, and that, now, anyone was a target, whether they were part of the movement against the war or not.

Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who went on to win the Democratic nomination for President in 1972, said that Nixon should have been impeached for the Cambodian Incursion. This was before anyone knew just how bad what was originally known as "the Watergate matter" was.

But the people in the movement were outnumbered. Nixon kept the war going. Then, just before the 1972 election, his negotiator, Henry Kissinger, announced, "Peace is at hand." With his biggest issue taken away from him, McGovern was doomed. Nixon won 49 States, all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

A grand jury indicted 5 National Guardsmen on felony charges, and 3 others on misdemeanor charges. In 1974, a federal Judge, Frank J. Battisti, dismissed the case, despite admitting that, "Such use of force is, and was, deplorable." Deplorable: A word that would be used to describe right-wing overreactors in America again.

A civil case was eventually settled by the State of Ohio -- for $675,000, about $4.5 million in today's money. Given how many people were killed and hurt, it doesn't sound like much. An official apology was also publicly delivered.

But while 1974 was the year the criminal case in Kent State was dismissed, it was also the year that Nixon had to resign the Presidency, knowing that, if he didn't, he would be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives and removed from office by the U.S. Senate -- not for any of his actions in Southeast Asia, including the one that led indirectly to the Kent State Massacre, but for the myriad crimes that fell under the umbrella term "Watergate."

Although the charges detailed in the Articles of Impeachment that had already been drawn up were very specific, and did not included anything he did in regard to Vietnam, Nixon was, more or less, paying with his job, and his place in history, for everything that he did.

You Are a Survivor. Yes, You.

NOTE: When I wrote this, COVID-19 was still pretty much a rumor in America. We had no idea of what its effect on America would be. Little did we know just how badly Trump would screw up his response to it. And over 1 million Americans did not survive it. But for those who did survive it, the following still applies.

Today is January 20, 2020. One year from today, there will be a Presidential Inauguration.

If we do what we have to do, the President inaugurated on that day will not be Donald Trump, or any of the Republicans standing with him now, including Vice President Mike Pence.

We have survived 3 years of this Administration.

You have survived it.

You, yes, you are a survivor.

Think about it:

* If you are at lesat 11 years old, you survived some of the George W. Bush Administration.

* If you are at least 19 years old, you survived the entire Dubya Administration and the 9/11 attacks.

* If you are at least 29 years old, you survived at least some of the Cold War.

* If you are at least 31 years old, you survived some of the Ronald Reagan Administration.

* If you are at least 39 years old, you survived the entire Reagan Administration.

* If you are at least 46 years old, you survived some of the Richard Nixon Administration. And I have survived each of the preceding along with you.

* If you are at least 51 years old, you survived the entire Nixon Administration.

* If you are at least 58 years old, you survived the Cuban Missile Crisis.

* If you are at least 65 years old, you survived the Vietnam War, either serving in it or avoiding having been drafted into it.

* If you are at least 85 years old, you survived the Korean War, either serving in it or avoiding having been drafted into it.

* If you are at least 93 years old, you survived World War II, either serving in it or avoiding having been drafted into it.

* And if you are between 79 and 91 years old, you survived the Great Depression.

Congratulations on surviving everything that you have survived.

So why not live one more year? If you've survived even half of this stuff, anything after surviving the Trump Administration is going to be icing on the cake.

*

Days until the Baseball Hall of Fame vote is announced, electing Derek Jeter: 1, tomorrow.

Days until Arsenal play again: 1, tomorrow, 3:15 PM New York time, in Premier League action, away to West London team Chelsea.

Days until the 1st Presidential voting of 2020, the Iowa Caucuses: 14, on Monday, February 3. Just 2 weeks. The New Hampshire Primary will be 8 days later.

Days until the New Jersey Devils next play a local rival: 17, on Thursday night, February 6, against the Philadelphia Flyers, a.k.a. The Philth, will be at the Wells Fargo Center. The next game against the New York Rangers, a.k.a. The Scum, will be on Saturday night, March 7, at Madison Square Garden. The next game against the New York Islanders will be on Saturday night, March 21, at the Prudential Center.

Days until the New York Red Bulls play again: 41, on Sunday, March 1, at 1:00 PM, home to FC Cincinnati. Under 6 weeks.

Days until the Yankees' 2020 Opening Day: 66, at 1:00 on Thursday, March 26, away to the Baltimore Orioles. Under 10 weeks. And now, it feels as though we can look forward to it.

Days until the U.S. national soccer team plays again: 66, at 3:45 PM New York time on March 26, 2020, against the Netherlands, at Philips Stadion in Eindhoven, home of PSV Eindhoven.

Days until the Yankees' 2020 home opener: 73, on Thursday, April 2, against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Days until the Red Bulls next play a "derby": 89, on Saturday, April 18, at 1:00 PM, against the New England Revolution, at Red Bull Arena. On Sunday, April 26, at 3:00 PM, they will play D.C. United, at Audi Field in Washington. On Sunday, May 31, at 3:00 PM, they will play New York City FC, at Yankee Stadium II. And on Saturday, June 6, at 6:00 PM, they will play the Philadelphia Union, at Red Bull Arena.

Days until the next North London Derby: 96, on Saturday, April 25, Arsenal's 1st visit to the new Tottenham Stadium, adjacent to the site of the previous White Hart Lane. A little over 3 months. It is currently scheduled to be on the 16th Anniversary of the 2nd time that Arsenal won the League at White Hart Lane -- but also the last time Arsenal won the League anywhere. Of course, for TV reasons, the game could be moved to another date, probably the next day.

Days until the next Yankees-Red Sox series begins: 109, on May 8, 2020, at Yankee Stadium II. Under 4 months. 

Days until Euro 2020 begins, a tournament being held all over Europe instead of in a single host nation: 144, on Friday, June 12, 2020. Under 5 months.

Days until the next Summer Olympics begins in Tokyo, Japan: 186, on July 24, 2020. A little over 6 months.

Days until Rutgers University plays football again: 229, on Saturday, September 5, at noon, home to Monmouth University, a Football Championship Subdivision School in West Long Branch, Monmouth County, New Jersey. In other words, if they don't win this game overwhelmingly, especially now that Greg Schiano is back as head coach, it will look very, very bad. Anyway, under 8 months.

Days until East Brunswick High School plays football again: Unknown, as the 2020 schedule has not been released yet. Most likely, the season opener will be against arch-rival Old Bridge, on Friday night, September 11, away at the purple shit pit on Route 9. That's 235 days.

Days until the next East Brunswick-Old Bridge football game: See the previous answer.

Days until the next Presidential election, when we can dump the Trump-Pence regime and elect a real Administration: 288, on November 3, 2020. Under 10 months.

Days until the next Rutgers-Penn State football game: 313, on Saturday, November 28, at home. A little over 10 months.

Days until a fully-Democratic-controlled Congress can convene, and the Republicans can do nothing about it: 349, on January 3, 2021. Under a year, or under 12 months.

Days until Liberation Day: 366, at noon on January 20, 2021. Exactly 1 year, or exactly 12 months. (Remember: 2020 is a Leap Year.) Note that this is liberation from the Republican Party, not just from Donald Trump. Having Mike Pence as President wouldn't be better, just differently bad, mixing theocracy with plutocracy, rather than mixing kleptocracy with plutocracy.

Days until Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz become eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame: 722, on January 11, 2022. Under 2 years. We will then find out if it's okay for a Red Sox steroid cheat to be in the Hall, but not for a Yankee steroid cheat.

Days until the next Winter Olympics begins in Beijing, China: 746, on February 4, 2022. A little over 2 years, or a little over 24 months.

Days until the next World Cup is scheduled to kick off in Qatar: 1,036, on November 21, 2022, in Qatar. Under 3 years, or just 34 months.

Days until the next Women's World Cup is scheduled to kick off: As yet unknown, but space on the international women's soccer calendar has been cleared for July 10 to August 20, 2023. So if July 10 is the tournament's starting date, that would be 1,267 days, a little over 3 1/2 years, or under 42 months. A host nation is expected to be chosen on March 20, 2020. Bids have bee put in by Brazil (South America has never hosted), Colombia (ditto), Japan (Asia last hosted in 2007), and a joint bid by Australia and New Zealand (Oceania has never hosted).

What the World Was Like When I Was Born

December 18, 1969, 50 years ago today: Yours truly was born at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, Essex County, New Jersey. This is what the world was like at the time:

There was an American League team in Washington, D.C., and it wasn't the Nationals, it was the Senators. There was also an American League team in Washington State, in Seattle, as there is now, but it wasn't the Mariners. It was the Pilots, who would, before the next season dawned, fill a 4-year void (save for a few "home games" in 1968 and '69 by the Chicago White Sox) and become the Milwaukee Brewers. The Houston Astros were in the National League. There were still minor-league teams in Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Miami and the Tampa Bay area.

There were black players and Hispanic players in Major League Baseball, but no Asian players, and no designated hitter. Only the Astrodome in Houston had a roof, and it was not retractable. There was no regular-season Interleague Play.

The Pilots/Brewers, the Kansas City Royals, the Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres had all just debuted, and, between them, lost 411 games that season. The Baltimore Orioles won 109 games, a match for the most games won between 1954 and 1998... and still lost the World Series.

Every major league ballpark had lights except Wrigley Field in Chicago. But only one, the Astrodome, had artificial turf.  That would soon change, as, the following season, multipurpose stadiums would open in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with the plastic stuff, and in Philadelphia a year after that, while St. Louis, San Francisco and, strangely, Comiskey Park in Chicago would all put it down for a few years, before tearing it back up and replacing it with real grass.

But, for the moment, there were still 11 of the 24 teams playing in ballparks built before World War II, and 7 of them built in 1912 or earlier.  Indeed, there were still 3 ballparks standing -- Comiskey, Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia (formerly Shibe Park) and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh -- that had hosted not just Cy Young Award winners, but Cy Young himself.

Of the 24 ballparks used by MLB teams that year, only 9 still stand, and only 5 are still in use by the teams then using them: Fenway, Wrigley, Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium in the Los Angeles area, and the Oakland Coliseum. Still standing but no longer being used by an MLB team: Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington (scheduled for demolition in 2021), San Diego Stadium (now SDCCU Stadium) and the Astrodome (dormant, its future uncertain).

The only NFL team still in the same stadium they were in for the 1969 season are the Green Bay Packers (Lambeau Field). The Los Angeles Rams and Oakland Raiders left the ones they used for 1969, and returned, but both are about to leave again, the Rams for a dome in suburban Inglewood, the Raiders for Las Vegas.

From the NBA and the NHL combined, only one arena remains from the 1969-70 season that was being played: Madison Square Garden in New York, then billed as "the New Madison Square Garden Center," but now older than the "Old Garden" that it replaced.

Major League Baseball celebrated the 100th Anniversary of professional baseball, with an all-time team that proclaimed Babe Ruth "Baseball's Greatest Player Ever" and Joe DiMaggio "Baseball's Greatest Living Player." Also on their list of greatest living players, but like Joe D no longer living today, were George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer, Joe Cronin, Pie Traynor, Ted Williams, Bill Dickey, Lefty Grove and Bob Feller. The only one still alive from that team is Willie Mays, still active at that time.

The National Football League celebrated its 50th season (the next year would be its 50th
Anniversary) with an all-time team, with members like Johnny Unitas, Sammy Baugh, Marion Motley, Don Hutson, Forrest Gregg, Mel Hein, Gino Marchetti, Leo Nomellini, Ray Nitschke, Dick "Night Train" Lane and Emlen Tunnell. All of these men were then all still alive. Unitas, Gregg and Nitschke were still active. All of them are now dead.

The NFL, in the process of being merged with the AFL, and had a combined total of 26 teams. There was a team in Baltimore, but it wasn't the Ravens. There was one in St. Louis, but it wasn't the Rams. There was one in Houston, but it wasn't the Texans.

The Boston Patriots had yet to move out to the suburbs and became "the New England Patriots." The Patriots, 49ers, Raiders, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers had yet to win any World Championships. The Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not exist, nor did the Baltimore Ravens under that name. Between them, those teams have now won 29 Super Bowls.

Some of the NFL's founding fathers were not only still alive, but still involved: George Halas with the Chicago Bears, Art Rooney with the Steelers, and Dan Reeves with the Rams – no relation to the Cowboys running back of the same name, later to be head coach of the Broncos, Giants and Atlanta Falcons. 

The defending World Champions in the 4 major sports were the Mets, the Jets, the Boston Celtics and the Montreal Canadiens. Yes, the Mets and the Jets were both World Champions, and the Knicks were about to be. Stop laughing. The Jets had actually won a title before the Knicks, who were now -- if you didn't count the American Basketball Association's New York Nets, out on Long Island -- the only New York team without a World Championship. But that would soon change.

The Heavyweight Championship of the World was split following Muhammad Ali being stripped of the title. The World Boxing Council (WBC) recognized Joe Frazier as Champion, while the World Boxing Association (WBA) recognized Jimmy Ellis. On February 16, 1970, they settled things at Madison Square Garden. Having never been knocked down (though he had been defeated), Ellis was knocked down twice in the 4th round, and the referee stopped the fight before the 5th, and Frazier was Champion. He really settled things at The Garden a year later, beating Ali.

What were the defining baseball players of my childhood doing at this time? Reggie Jackson had just finished his 2nd full season, in which he hit 47 home runs. Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk had recently made their big-league debuts.

Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan had helped the Mets to their Miracle – but, at this point, if you had bet then that neither one would ever win another World Championship, people would have laughed at you. (Of course, at that point, they also would have laughed if you had then bet that Ryan would win more games in the majors than Seaver.) Steve Carlton had recently struck out 19 Mets in a game, setting a new National League record -- and losing, because Ron Swoboda hit 2 home runs.

 
Pete Rose won his 2nd straight NL batting title, and his Cincinnati Reds teammate Johnny Bench had a pretty good season, but they hadn't yet won their 1st Pennant, Cincinnati's 1st since 1961. That would come the next season. Willie Stargell had just become the 1st player to hit a home run completely out of Dodger Stadium. Rod Carew had just won his 1st American League batting title. Carl Yastrzemski hit 40 home runs and drove in 111 runs, but his Red Sox had already changed significantly from their "Impossible Dream" Pennant team of 2 years earlier.

Mike Schmidt was still playing at Ohio University (not to be confused with The… Ohio State University, whose football team had just blown a 2nd straight National Championship by getting upset by arch-rival Michigan), and had yet to face a professional pitch. George Brett was still at El Segundo High School in Los Angeles County.

The head coaches of the major league teams then playing in the New York Tri-State Area were Ralph Houk of the Yankees, Gil Hodges of the Mets, Alex Webster of the Giants, Weeb Ewbank of the Jets, Red Holzman of the Knicks, York Larese of the Nets, and Emile Francis of the Rangers. Only Francis is still alive. The Islanders wouldn't begin play for another 3 years, the Devils for 13, the Red Bulls for 26, the Liberty for 27, NYCFC for 45.

Of the current coaches of the Tri-State Area teams: Barry Trotz of the Islanders was 7 years old. So was Domenec Torrent of New York City FC, who was just relieved of his duties, but his successor has not yet been named. Mike Miller of the Knicks was 5, Pat Shurmur of the Giants was 4, David Quinn of the Rangers was 3, and Kenny Atkinson of the Nets was 2. Aaron Boone of the Yankees, Carlos Beltran of the Mets, Adam Gase of the Jets, Katie Smith of the Liberty, Alain Nasreddine of the Devils and Chris Armas of the Red Bulls weren't born yet.

The Olympic Games have since been held in America 4 times, Canada 3 times; Japan, Russia and Korea twice; and once each in Germany, Austria, Bosnia, France, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, China, Britain and Brazil. The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany, and once each in America, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

The University of Texas had just beaten the University of Arkansas to win yet another college football "Game of the Century," and would beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl to win the National Championship. It was the 1st time Notre Dame had accepted a bowl bid since their "Four Horsemen" went to the 1925 Rose Bowl. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) was about to win its 4th straight National Championship in college basketball, their 6th overall, and this time without a dominant center.

UCLA's recently-graduated dominating center, Lew Alcindor, was winning the NBA Rookie of the Year with the Milwaukee Bucks, who got him because they finished tied with the Phoenix Suns with the worst record in the NBA the season before (each club's 1st season), and the tie was broken when… the Bucks won a coin toss. Unfair? Perhaps: The Bucks did get a title out of it, in 1971, but haven't won one since. The Suns have never won one, although, like the Bucks, they've usually been good. Soon after that title, Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

There were then 25 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. There was, as yet, no Environmental Protection Agency, Title IX or legalized abortion. The Stonewall Riot had happened less than 6 months earlier. 

Richard Nixon was President of the United States. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson were still alive. So was the widow of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had died earlier in the year. Gerald Ford was the Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jimmy Carter was a former State Senator in Georgia, about to run his 2nd, much more successful, campaign for Governor. Ronald Reagan was in his 1st term as Governor of California. 

Keep smiling, Tricky Dick. We know how the story ends.

George Herbert Walker Bush was a Congressman from Texas, and his son George had entered the Texas Air National Guard. Apparently, it was okay for him and his father to support the Vietnam War even if he didn't have to actually fight in it. Bill Clinton did not support the war, and managed to avoid service through means that, if not entirely ethical, were, at least, legal. He was then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Hillary Rodham had just entered Yale Law School. Barack Obama was in grade school.

Donald Trump was at the University of Pennsylvania, having gotten 5 deferments, including one for bone spurs in his heel, not that anyone believed that. Joe Biden, who got a deferment due to asthma, had just gotten elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware. Nancy Pelosi was working for San Francisco-based Congressman Philip Burton, whose seat she would win in 1986. Her brother, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., like their father before them, was then Mayor of Baltimore.

Trump actually had decent hair then.

He was still an indecent person.

The Governor of New York was Nelson Rockefeller, having made 3 unsuccessful runs for President. The Mayor of New York City was John Lindsay, who had just been denied renomination by the City's Republican Party because of his poor handling of snow removal during the blizzard earlier in the year. But he ran as a 3rd-party nominee and won a 2nd term anyway.

The Governor of New Jersey was Richard J. Hughes, about to wrap up his 2nd term. Former Governor Robert B. Meyner had tried to get the office back, but lost to South Jersey Congressman William T. Cahill, who became the State's 1st Republican Governor in 16 years (8 of Meyner, 8 of Hughes).

There were still living people who were veterans of the Indian Wars, the Mahdist War, the Northwest Rebellion; competitors at the 1st modern Olympics in 1896, and in every World Series except those of 1905, 1906 and 1907.

The United Nations' International Labor Organization had just be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Pope was Paul VI. The current Pope, Benedict XVI, then Father Joseph Ratzinger, was teaching in his native Germany, at the University of Regensburg. There have since been 8 Presidents of the United States, 8 Prime Ministers of Britain and 4 Popes.

Canada's Prime Minister was Pierre Trudeau. He was young (51), dashing and charismatic. It was as if John F. Kennedy was singing lead for the Beatles – in French. Canada, as I said, now had its 1st Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos. And a group called The Guess Who had just become Canada's biggest rock band ever (to that point). For the first time ever, Canada was hip. Especially if you were an American worrying about being drafted. 

Elizabeth II was Queen of England -- that still hasn't changed -- but she was just 43 years old. Britain's Prime Minister was Harold Wilson. The English Football League season that was underway would be won by Everton, the "other club" in Liverpool, and the FA Cup, for the 1st time, would be won by London's Chelsea.

Queen Elizabeth, 43, looking a bit like my grandmother did at that time.

Prince Charles, 19, looking a bit like I did at the same age.

In the season that ended earlier in the year, the League was won by Leeds United, and the FA Cup was won by Manchester City, the defending League Champions, beating Leicester City 1-0 on a goal by Neil Young – no, not that Neil Young.

AC Milan, led by perhaps Italy's greatest player ever, Gianni Rivera, won their 2nd European Cup by beating Ajax Amsterdam, led by 21-year-old wunderkind Johan Cruijff. Ajax and their "Total Football" would be back, big-time. The current season's European Cup would be won by the other major Dutch team of the time, Rotterdam's Feyenoord.

Major novels of the year included The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, Portnoy’s Complaint by my fellow native of Essex Count, New Jersey, Philip Roth, Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw, and The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace (about a novel, of the same title, that was "the most banned book in history," containing a woman's thoughts during 7 minutes of sex).

There was also Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe. This was a name used for a composite of 24 authors (supposedly, 19 men and 5 women), conspiring to see if a novel could be really, really bad, but still sell big if it had a lot of sex scenes in it. This was a truly late-Sixties kind of experiment – and it worked.

Major non-fiction books included the career-launching memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and the career-launching historical work Mary, Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser.

J.R.R. Tolkein was still alive. Tom Clancy, rejected by the U.S. Army due to poor eyesight, had gone to work for an insurance company. Anne Rice was a graduate student at the University of California, having witnessed the People's Park demonstration earlier in the year. Stephen King was at the University of Maine. George R.R. Martin was at Northwestern University. John Grisham was in high school in the Mississippi suburbs of Memphis. J.K. Rowling was 4 years old, and living in Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, in the West Country of England..

No one had yet heard of John Rambo, Spenser: For Hire, George Smiley, The Punisher, Rocky Balboa, T.S. Garp, Arthur Dent, Jason Bourne, Hannibal Lecter, Celie Harris, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Ryan, Forrest Gump, John McClane, Alex Cross, Bridget Jones, Robert Langdon, Bella Swan, Lisbeth Salander or Katniss Everdeen.

The films On Her Majesty's Secret Service (George Lazenby's debut, and farewell, as James Bond) and Anne of the Thousand Days (starring Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn and Richard Burton as King Henry VIII) were released on the exact day that I was born. The Adam West version of Batman
had been canceled a year and a half earlier, and Bob Holiday, in the 1966 Broadway musical It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman, was the most recent live-action Man of Steel. Jon Pertwee was about to begin playing The Doctor.

"My name is... wait, this never happened to the other fella."

Other films out at the time were the film version of Hello, Dolly! with Barbra Streisand; They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; The Undefeated, a Western starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson; and Change of Habit, with Elvis Presley playing an inner-city doctor (seriously) who unintentionally tempts a nun played by Mary Tyler Moore. It was Elvis' last feature film, and it's one of his better ones. It was also the 1st time that Mary worked with Ed Asner, with The Mary Tyler Moore Show yet to come.

Reminding The Beatles, and everybody else,

who's King around here, anyway.

In 1963, Elvis had appeared in It Happened at the World's Fair. This film was the film debut of Kurt Russell, 11 years old at the time of filming. In 1969, Elvis' character in Change of Habit was named John Carpenter. In 1979, Russell played the King of Rock and Roll in the TV-movie Elvis. It was directed by John Carpenter (his real name), who would also direct Russell in a few other films, including The Thing.

George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola had just founded American Zoetrope Studios, but Lucas had yet to make a full-length feature film. This was also then true of Steven Spielberg. Martin Scorcese had made 1, Who's That Knocking At My Door? Michael Douglas was 25 years old, and filming Adam at Six A.M. His future wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, was almost 3 months old. No one had yet heard of John Shaft, Leatherface, Damien Thorn, Howard Beale, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger.

Television shows that debuted in that season included Room 222, Marcus Welby, M.D., Medical Center, The Brady Bunch, and kids' shows Sesame Street, H.R. Pufnstuf and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? From Britain came the debuts of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Benny Hill Show.  

Zoinks!

Star Trek aired its last first-run episode 6 months earlier. As series star William Shatner put it, "We all thought it was over!" As series creator Gene Roddenberry put it, "Six weeks later, man landed on the Moon. Suddenly, traveling to space didn't seem all that strange anymore." The original show was a victim of timing.

Or was it? It was soon picked up in syndication, and, like The Honeymooners before it and The Odd Couple after it, also shown on New York's WPIX-Channel 11, it gained a massive following that it never got on its original network.

That didn't help Roddenberry -- at least, not yet. He had just gotten divorced, and had just seen his pet project get canceled, had sworn he would never write for television again, and was now writing a sexploitation film, Pretty Maids All in a Row. Despite being directed by Roger Vadim, and starring Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Roddy McDowell, Star Trek veterans James Doohan and William Campbell, and future The Secrets of Isis star Joanna Cameron, it flopped upon its 1971 release.

No one had yet heard of Keith Partridge, Archie Bunker, Kwai Chang Caine, Fred Sanford, Bob Hartley, Theo Kojak, Arthur Fonzarelli, Barney Miller, Basil Fawlty, J.R. Ewing, Mork from Ork, Jake and Elwood Blues, William Adama, Arnold Jackson, Ken Reeves, Mario and Luigi, Derek "Del Boy" Trotter, Sam Malone, Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey, He-Man, Edmund Blackadder, Goku, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Thundercats, Bart Simpson, Hayden Fox, Zack Morris, Dale Cooper, The Seinfeld Four, Buffy Summers, Fox Mulder, Andy Sipowicz, Doug Ross, Alan Partridge, Ross Geller and Rachel Greene, Xena, Ash Ketchum, Carrie Bradshaw, Tony Soprano, Jed Bartlet, Master Chief, Jack Bauer, Omar Little, Michael Bluth, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Rick Grimes, Bette Porter, Michael Scott, Don Draper, Walter White, Jax Teller, Richard Castle, Leslie Knope, Sarah Manning, Jane "Eleven" Hopper and Maggie Bell.

Robert Kardashian was in law school, Bruce Jenner was playing college football in Iowa, Kristen Mary Houghton was about to turn 14, and none of them knew each other yet.

The Number 1 song in America on the day I was born was "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam. They were not a real group, just a bunch of studio musicians, and the song is better known by its chorus: "Na na na na... Na na na na... hey hey hey, Goodbye!"

The month before, and it was the only month in which it would ever be true, both Elvis and the Beatles had Number 1 hits: Elvis had "Suspicious Minds" and the Beatles had the double-sided hit "Come Together" (written by John Lennon) and "Something" (which Frank Sinatra would call "the greatest love song of the last 50 years" after hailing Lennon and Paul McCartney as great songwriters, even though it was written by George Harrison).

Ironically, the one who this photo was said to have "proved" he was dead,

and is holding a cigarette, in this photo, is still alive.

The Supremes also had their last hit with Diana Ross, and it would become their last Number 1: "Someday We'll Be Together." Led Zeppelin had their highest-charting single (in the U.S., anyway), "Whole Lotta Love." Sinatra had hit with Paul Anka's song "My Way." Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were still alive and performing. Bob Dylan had hit with his country-themed album Nashville Skyline, Johnny Cash had a variety show on ABC, and each helped the other's comeback when Cash invited Dylan to appear on his show.

The Jackson 5 had just had their 1st hit, putting Michael Jackson into the national consciousness for the 1st time. David Bowie was riding the success of "Space Oddity." Elton John released his debut solo album, Empty Sky. Bruce Springsteen had just formed a band named Steel Mill, Billy Joel one named Attila.

Hippies were all the rage, although they would have been shocked that it would take until 2012 for recreational marijuana use to be legal in any State. The gay rights movement had really kicked off in June, but at the time, I don't think anyone involved expected that gay marriage would be legal in their lifetimes, in even a few States.

A noted photo from Woodstock, August 17, 1969. Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline.

The same couple now. They married in 1971, and are still together.

Inflation has been such that what $1.00 would buy then, $6.82 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp was 6 cents. A New York Subway token was 20 cents. The average prices of a gallon of gas was 35 cents, a cup of coffee 42 cents, a McDonald's meal 79 cents (49 cents of that being the recently-introduced Big Mac), a movie ticket $1.20, a new car around $2,300, and a new house $28,100. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 783.79.

Photo of unidentified people taken from Ellis Island, 1969.

Note the original World Trade Center under construction.

The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building, but the World Trade Center complex was under construction. There were no portable telephones, unless you count car phones. Only about half of American homes had color television sets. There were no video games -- there were arcades, but they were still based on pinball machines, as told in The Who's rock opera of that year, Tommy.

There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. There were birth control pills, but no Viagra.

Credit cards were still a relatively new thing, and the 1st automatic teller machine in America had just gone into operation. There were no tabletop, let alone desktop or laptop, computers. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee were all 14 years old. But at least then, we could legitimately say, "We can put a man on the Moon, so why can't we... ?"

Toward the end of 1969, the first draft lottery of the Vietnam War era was held. The 1st Boeing 747 made its maiden flight, from Seattle to New York. Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by Chicago police officers. Labor leader Jock Yablonski was assassinated on the order of a rival.

And 2 people were murdered at a rock concert at the Altamont Speedway in California's East Bay region, while the Rolling Stones sang "Gimme Shelter," thus providing both a stark contrast to Woodstock 4 months earlier and a painful end to the 1960s for rock and roll fans.

Joseph Kennedy Sr., and Josef von Sternberg, and Ruth White, an actress from Perth Amboy, New Jersey who had recently appeared in Midnight Cowboy, died. (She was 55 and had cancer, while the others were much older.) Shawn Carter (a.k.a. Jay-Z), and Kristy Swanson (the 1st Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Julie Delpy were born. And, on the exact same day that I was born, so was a Major League Baseball player, Joe Randa, a 3rd baseman who played from 1995 to 2006, mostly for the Kansas City Royals.

Joe Randa

That's what life was like when I was born, on December 18, 1969. It was a different time.

Aren't they all?