History Lesson

After our turkey dinner on TG, complete with a lime-green and pineapple jello mold, I went to the movies with my Lynn, Liz, Erin, and Allie. Watching BOBBY was nostalgic and thought-provoking. Two days later, I continue to ponder my own slice of personal history related to that era.

Bobby Kennedy entered the presidential race at the end of March 1968. I had just turned sixteen. Not yet old enough to vote, my thoughts were on driving, clothing, friends, music. President John Kennedy had been assassinated just five years earlier.

Martin Luther King was murdered a few weeks after Bobby's announcement to enter the presidential race. The war in Vietnam and civil rights riots sometimes felt far from the suburbs of Buffalo, but thanks to up-close-and-personal broadcasting, these events arrived on our television set each evening. The world out there seemed to be a troubled and violent place.

We grew up with the hopefulness aroused by the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. The rules were changing. An emerging youth culture was bursting with flower power, hippies, humanity, rock and roll. Daily casualities of the war had reached about two thousand. Most kids were against the draft and the war. Everyone knew somebody there.

Bobby was shot in early June. Ever since his brother's death, tragedy seemed to be woven into the fabric of our lives. Yet, day-to-day existence for a sixteen-year-old girl remained intact. I lounged on the beach at a Lake Erie cottage with girlfriends during the week of the violent August protests at the Chicago democratic convention. Kids just a couple years older were getting their heads bashed in. A revolution was underway. Nixon was elected. The killing in Vietnam would continue for seven more years.

A year later, this photo of Hillary Rodham (Clinton) was taken....a girl like me. I am not convinced she is the best candidate for our next president, but I do like to see her in context in this history lesson.