December, 1969

My first semester of college ended quietly that month. I came home for the Christmas break. Above is a photo of my brother Tom and I taken a year or two later - he's playing my new banjo "Norma" which I still have.

I did generally poorly at my studies and received a notice from the administration that I was being put on probation. For the second semester, I decided to take only courses that appealed to me - most of them having to do with the arts. I signed up for an art course, a piano course, and a theater course - and my life changed in an instant. That Spring, I became a Theater Major.

The first draft lottery took place on December 1. Designed to offer a measure of fairness to the nation's draft system, the new lottery determined the order of call for induction into the armed services based on "the luck of the draw" - if your birth date was drawn as a low number, your chances of being drafted increased. Those with very low numbers were certain to be drafted.

This first lottery covered those born between 1944 and 1950, so I wasn't affected, but if I had been, my birthday came up at the very bottom - 354. I wasn't so lucky the next year when 1951 was drawn - my birthday came up at #12 - I was certain to be drafted after my deferment ended in 1973. What saved me in the end was the winding down of the Vietnam War. In January, 1973 the Paris Peace Accords were signed, officially ending U.S. involvement in the war. At some date prior to this, I was called in for a pre-selection physical exam, but I simply ignored the summons. My older brother Tom had more serious trouble to the Selective Service - after he dropped out of college he also ignored several summons to report for a physical and finally was simply drafted without an exam. He did not report. The only fallout from his failure to report for induction was a visitation one day to our home in Ontario from Federal agents - my mother - to my everlasting adoration - ordered the government men off her property.

Nigerian Federal troops launch their final offensive against the breakaway province the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra. Since the war's beginning in 1967, the conflict caused an estimated one million military and civilian casualties.

The Altamont Free Concert takes place at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California on December 6. Headlined by The Rolling Stones, some 300,000 attend the event which is marred by violence, including a a homicide and three accidental deaths. The stabbing murder of one spectator is perpetrated by members of the Hell's Angels, who were - by some accounts - there to provide security. Some chroniclers of the era consider the event to be the "end of the 60s." I might choose the killing at Kent State the following year, of the defeat of George McGovern by Richard Nixon in 1972. But certainly, sometime in between those dates was what Hunter Thompson rightly called "the high-water mark" of that time.

On December 4, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and an associate are shot dead by Chicago Police in a raid on an apartment in Chicago.

Tiny Tim weds his bride "Miss Vicki" on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson before an estimated 40 million viewers. The couple, who composed their own vows, promised "not to get puffed up." This was the pinnacle of Tim's career, who had had achieved success the year before with his hit rendition of the classic "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Further success proved elusive. In 1996, Tiny Tim collapsed during a performance of the song and died a short time later.

Died on December 22 - Josef von Sternberg, Film Director of The Blue Angel, among others.

Born on December 21 - French actress Julie Delpy.

On December 5, the debut album from The Jackson Five is released, containing their first hit - I Want You Back."

The number one song on the pop charts for two weeks that month was Steam's hit Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. It was replaced later in the month by Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane - the group's last Number 1.

Three songs by singer/songwriter Laura Nyro are in the Top Ten simultaneously that month - Eli's Coming by Three Dog Night, Wedding Bell Blues by The 5th Dimension, and And When I Die by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. I'm not sure, but believe that feat has never been matched before or since.

So, that is the year of 1969 as I remember it, and as it happened to me. I was terribly young, unsure of myself, confused, less smart than I thought, but ready to go and full of energy. My family allowed my to make my own way and to make my own mistakes, and for that I will always consider myself extremely lucky. It was a hell of a time to be young and it was something to experience. The world has changed greatly in the last 40 years, and I hope I don't sound too much like an old man when I say that much of it has been for the worse. But not all. I am skeptical of the future, but I also remain an eternal optimist.

"God Bless Us, Every one."

November, 1969

On November 3, U.S. President Richard Nixon speaks to the nation in a televised address regarding his plan to "Vietnamize" the war. In part, Nixon says "And now I would like to address a word, if I may, to the young people of this Nation who are particularly concerned, and I understand why they are concerned, about this war. I respect your idealism. I share your concern for peace. I want peace as much as you do."

Later in the speech, known forever after as Nixon's "Silent Majority speech, he adds "And so tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support."

More than 500,000 protesters march on Washington, DC on November 15 demanding an end to the War in Vietnam. Sadly, Nixon did not appear to want peace "that" badly.

I was now becoming somewhat radicalized, albeit in a limited fashion. After several years of fence-sitting, trying to balance the patriotism that had been instilled in me as a young boy and my natural instinct that war was a terrible and senseless thing, I now firmly believed that the War in Vietnam must be stopped by any means short of violence. Or maybe some mild violence short of killing.

College and exposure to different people and ideas was beginning to change me. It was likely that I had my first (of many!) experience with marijuana that month, offered to me by my friends across the hall in my dorm. I was hesitant, but decided to take the plunge. It took several experiences before I got even a little high. One must remember that back then, a place like northern New York was virtually the last stop on the drug express, and the quality of the pot we were able to obtain was poor at best. Down to the stems and seeds again.

SUNY Potsdam still clung to many of the old college traditions, and the worst - to us - was the unequal treatment of women. Women had strict curfews; the men did not. Visitation in the dorms was limited to specific times and places. Certainly not in a "room" and certainly not with the door closed. One night, a large group of students, enraged by college policies, the war, and just about everything else, marched down to the President's house to demand change. The Potsdam police even followed us and eventually broke the demonstration up. It was a small taste of the firestorm that erupt a few months later when the Kent State killings occurred on May 4, 1970. Then, our campus, and those across the country, became engulfed in bitter protest. Most, like Potsdam State, shut down early that May.

The Rolling Stones release their landmark album Let It Bleed on November 28.



On November 1, Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds reaches #1 on the U.S. pop charts. It was his last number one hit prior to his death in 1977.

Sesame Street premiers on the then National Educational Network, the predecessor of PBS.

On November 19, the 3rd and 4th humans walk on the Moon - Charles Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12.

The United States Senate votes down President Nixon's nomination of Clement Haynsworth of South Carolina to a seat on the Supreme Court. Unlike today's highly partisan Congressional politics, 17 Republican senators join 38 Democrats to reject the nomination.

John Lennon returns his MBE to the British Government in protest of the War in Vietnam.

Journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the March, 1968 massacre of civilians near My Lai in South Vietnam.

Born on November 4, American rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs. On November 18, Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy dies.

Native American activists seize Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay with the goal of gaining deed to the island. The occupation lasts until June, 1971.

On November 30, song-duo Simon and Garfunkel present a one hour television special entitled "Songs of America" which featured anti-war and other anti-establishment themes. I remember watching it and being affected deeply. The 60s were drawing to a close.

October, 1969

The revolution starts here.

I was now into my second month of college, and the transition was shaky at best. I was truly missing home and my pre-college life, but found the various changes I was undergoing to be at least somewhat thrilling. New people, new friends, new ideas. An upperclassman, Bob Stabile, but known to most (until this day) as Professor Hokum W. Jeebs, stopped by my room to ask if I was sell the gramophone speaker I had in my window (I would not). I had joined the staff of the college radio station - WRPS - and was now a DJ. I would continue spinning records, later with WNTS (Northern Twin Colleges) , throughout my years in Potsdam.

I loved playing music from new artists - James Taylor, Carole King, Steely Dan, The Allman Brothers, Cat Stevens - there was a lot of good music back then.

My studies were not living up to my expectations. History, a subject in which I'd always excelled, was proving to be difficult and boring to me. Did I really want to be a history teacher? By then I'm sure the answer was now "no." I struggled in my other courses. In philosophy, my professor was a young radical from New York City, who did his best to indoctrinate us freshmen with leftist fervor, and I think he succeeded to some degree, though the times themselves had a lot to do with it. A paper I wrote on the 60s anti-poverty programs was greeted by him with scorn and mockery. I purposefully then wrote another paper extolling the virtues of communist reforms in Cuba on which he lavished praise and encouragement. Left, right - they were all crazy, I thought.

I have a few scattered notes from this time, and an entry in October contains a single word - confusion.

Student life was highly segrgated and divided into several groups that did not usually mingle all that much. The jocks, the fraternity/sorority greeks, the nerds, the "Crannies" - music school students, and the freaks. I was going down the route of the last group and beginning to "let my freak flag fly."

Author Jack Kerouac died on October 21 one day after being rushed with severe abdominal pain from his St. Petersburg home by ambulance.

His death, at the age of 47, resulted from an internal hemorrhage, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. It was a few years after his death that a became a Kerouac addict, devouring all of his writings I could get my hands on.

The first message over Arpanet, the world's first operational packet-switching network and the predecessor to the Internet, is sent from a lab at UCLA to one at Stanford.

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, is released October 24. The film went on to receive four Oscars, including one for the best original song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." I saw the film soon after it came out; it contains one my my all-time favorite scenes, when, after over-dynamiting a safe during a train robbery, Reford deadpans to Newman: "Think you used enough dynamite there Butch?"

WalMart is incorporated on October 31. This scourge plagues us until this day.

The "Days of Rage" organized by The Weather Underground take place in Chicago. On October 15, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters take to the nation's streets.

Born on October 10 - NFL quarterback Brett Favre.

On October 5, The BBC broadcasts the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

The great Paul is Dead rumor reaches us in Potsdam. Some of my friends and I spend hours and hours analyzing the "clues" and listening to part of Beatles tracks backwards. Paul is barefoot on the Abbey Road cover, "I Buried Paul" at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, etc. etc.

Paul McCartney later comments "It is all bloody stupid."

I still have to this day a copy of the special magazine rushed out to take advantage of folks like me, pictured below.



Around that time, a friend and I got hold of a bootleg tape of The Beatles Get Back/Let It Be sessions. This provided us with ample more fuel for the fire. We went so far as to telephone the Apple Records office in London - we were after all, journalists from Radio Potsdam station WRPS. We recorded the call and convinced ourselves that a voice heard shouting in the background was the one and only John Lennon.

One good result - while we were immersed in Paul and Beatles research, we learned of the famous Butcher Block cover for the album Yesterday and Today. We took out my copy, looked it over, and though we saw something underneath.

With the help of some steam, we loosened the cover, and voila - there was the original - then, and now a collector's item. I still have that as well.

On October 24, Irish expatriate author Samuel Beckett is awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature. A few years later I would play the character Lucky in a production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot - the pinnacle of my acting career.

The "Miracle" New York Mets shock the baseball world by winning the World Series over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles.

Vice President Spiro Agnew says of war protesters "A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

I take issue with this vicious and untrue characterization. I was happy to be an impudent slob.

September, 1969

Around the Labor Day weekend in early September, I officially start college as a freshman at SUNY Potsdam, located up in the St. Lawrence River Valley in far northern New York. I have a very clear memory is my father talking to me in my room as I was going to bed the night before driving up to drop me off. He gave me a little pep talk and told me that he loved me. Now, I had been quite a thorn in his side ever since I was little, and I don't ever remember him telling me that before. So it meant something to me. Though in retrospect, it's possible and even likely that he was glad to see me go. I'm sue he secretly said "yes!" Above, my Mom and brother Brian in the Potsdam quad, around September 1, 1969.

I was now living in room 122 (I think) of Van Housen Hall, the first floor. Due to a housing shortage on campus, three students were crowded into rooms designed to accommodate two (like modern prisons, I guess), so a friend and I and someone I have no memory of moved in. My friend from high school decided to attend Potsdam because I was going there. It was also his idea to share a room, though I don't recall being wild about that. Across the hall were two guys from the Albany area, and next door were two Jewish guys from NYC - Billy Bernstein and Charlie Tuna. Billy was a huge Jefferson Airplane fan; Charlie Tuna was probably crazy and liked to light his farts to entertain us. Billy was dismayed to find some top 40 singles of bubble gum music in my collection. I don't suppose he called me a hick to my face, but a hick I was. Well, he kind of called me a hick, now that I think about it.



After a few weeks I was completely homesick and hopped a bus back to Rochester - it was around a five hour trip. A little bit later the father of a High School classmate would regularly give me rides home for weekends and holidays. I enjoyed his company tremendously, especially since he knew which bars to stop at along the way.

That Fall I had my first experience of heartbreak and lost love which lasted through my first semester. I took very long walks out into the countryside around Potsdam and generally felt miserable. It also rained quite a bit that Fall, and portions of the campus were under construction, so there was mud everywhere. Lots of mud.

My roommate later transferred to another school, wound up marrying a mutual friend, and eventually came out of the closet. I had no understanding of the possibility of being gay at that juncture of my life, but thinking back it explains quite a few things to me.

But Potsdam, before winter set in and I learned firsthand about North Country winters, was pleasant enough. There were bars galore (the drinking age in New York at the time was 18), girls, lots of live music, and even a small head shop called The Isle of You. There were three mens clothing stores, all beginning with the letter H - Harold's, Herman's .... and one other I don't remember. A music store, a movie theater, and a sub shop were also around. New things to do and try, interesting people to meet - a new life. I don't think that I drank a lot those first months of college, or tried smoking marijuana - that would come soon.

As far a classwork, I remember little of that time - History, Spanish, Philosophy, I think. I really didn't care much at all for it.

Boone's Farm Apple Wine was a discovery around that time - I remember sitting in the park and drinking a bottle with Annie McNamera. Anything to be around a girl.

Radio Hanoi announces the death of Ho Chi Minh, the long-time revolutionary and leader of North Vietnam. He was 79.

The Beatles release their final recorded album and probably their best - Abbey Road on September 26 (The album rumored to be called Get Back, recorded before Abbey Road, remained unreleased, but finally comes out the next year as Let It Be). I listened to this album again and again in my dorm room and it greatly helped me get over my private heartbreak. It's probably at the very top of my list of albums of all-time.

In a bloodless coup on September 1, Colonel Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi, the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council in Libya, assumes control of the North African country. The Colonel has maintained an interesting relationship with the United States ever since, and as of this writing is still with us.

The first ATM machine begins operation in Rockville Center, New York.


At the close of their first MLB season, the San Diego Padres lose their 110th game on September 30. They went on to win their final two games and finish the season with a record of 52-110. These days I am now a Padres fan, and as I write this they are - in last place!

Born on September 25, actress Catharine Zeta-Jones.



It is the heyday of Underground comix, featuring popular characters like Fritz The Cat, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Mr. Natural, most of which I am exposed to for the first time as copies are passed around our dorm.

On September 26, The Brady Bunch premiers on ABC. The show runs for five years.

Sugar, Sugar, probably the best-known song of the bubble gum genre and performed by the basically non-existent group The Archies, begins a four-week run at Number One of the pop charts. I was not a fan (thankfully) but will admit here a guilty fondness for The 1910 Fruitgum Company, another bubble gum band.



The Band release their self-titled second album on September 22. The album contains some of the group's best-known songs, including The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up on Cripple Creek, and Rag Mama Rag. Also released that month is Janis Joplin's first solo album I Got Them Ol' Kosmic Blues Again Mama.

August, 1969

"By the time we got to Woodstock
we were half a million strong
and everywhere was a song and celebration

- Joni Mitchell

On Friday morning, August 15, Dave Fisher and I put the top down on his car and headed East and South towards Bethel, NY, site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. We had with us tickets, sleeping bags, a bit of food, cigarettes, and some 8-track tapes Dave had for his car player. Dave had an 8-track of the first Crosby, Stills, & Nash album and we listened to that several times - I particularly remember grooving to Marrakesh Express and we drove along.

It was a bright sunny day, with few clouds and good vibes in the air. Of all my friends, I could only convince Dave to go. And we will always share that bond, though truth be told I don't think I ever saw him again after that weekend. Here's to you, Dave.

We drove south on Interstate 81, then East on Route 17, likely turning off on Route 97 and finally to Route 17B. Luckily for us, we we traveling down from the north, so we totally avoided the major traffic congestion that folks from the New York City area experienced. I think that we arrived in the general area around early afternoon, were able to get within a mile or less of the site, and parked his car in a field along with hundreds of other cars.

We joined others hiking towards the festival. We walked along 17B for some distance, then turned left down a road my memory tells me was dirt, though when I visited the site a few years ago it was paved.

We soon came upon what was left of the fences that were erected to keep non-ticket holders out. Now, there were thousands of people rather than hundreds. Then there were tens of thousands of people, and when we pushed forward out of the woods and into the great open hill, where a stage had been erected at the bottom, there were hundreds of thousands of people. It was sight one likely will never see in a lifetime; I know that I won't see the likes ever again.

My memories of the festival are hazy at best, or more correctly - so deeply personal and visual, that it's hard to express them. We first wandered around, back towards the woods. We came upon the Hog Farm encampment - I remember multi-colored banners and buses. We ran into a child of god - a couple of them, actually. They wanted to know where the music was and we excitedly told them. In thanking us one said "Hey man - do you want some bread?!!. We were hip to the lingo, of course, and said no, no money was necessary. He said, "No, BREAD!" and pulled a loaf from his back sack and shared it to us. That bread was possibly the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. Those guys were immediately brothers to me.

Wandering back to the hillside, we found a place was towards the back and made ourselves at home for the day. The vibes were great, people were friendly, stoned, happy. Looking back, it seems impossible that such a huge gathering could have been as peaceful and happy as Woodstock was that day. But it was. I clearly recall Richie Havens, who I knew nothing about at the time, leading off the music. His version of Freedom that day is well known and featured in the film; but he did several Beatles songs as well - Strawberry Fields Forever and With a Little Help from My Friends I remember and loved. I thought he was terrific and I was forever after a fan.



I of course knew about drugs from television and magazines, but until that day had never seen any or been around them. They were everywhere and available in the spirit of the day - but I was still reluctant and confused about the drug culture, so did not partake. But I wanted to. At one point, a very tripped out guy wandered through our area happily trying to sell acid - in his druggy voice that I so clearly remember and can't reproduce here. It was a bit like an old-time street vendor, updated for the times. But he stumbled or fell and his wares scattered "Ah man, I just spilled all my acid all over." Seemingly unconcerned, he strolled away telling us" If anyone wants some acid, it's all over the ground there."

It was hard to pay close attention to the music with all that was happening around. I kind of remember John Sebastian that day, Sweetwater, Ravi Shankar for sure, Arlo Guthrie, and most definitely Joan Baez singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot as I tried to go to sleep much later. A light rain had begun to fall late that evening. The rain soon became a big problem. The other was food.

We brought hardly any and the size of the crowd quickly overwhelmed the available food services, though if you were patient and were willing to wait in line for a very long time at one of the food stands at the top of the hill, you could get food - I remember half-cooked hamburgers that tasted wonderful once you finally got your hands on one. We were hungry and had to do what needed to be done. We might also have gotten some free food to the Hog Farm camp, but I could be wrong about that. I was intrigued by the Hog Farm folks and images of them have stuck in my memory.

If the first day was groovy, the second was less so. It was raining lightly when we went to sleep - we'd moved into the woods and found a seemingly good spot on a small hill to lay out our sleeping bags. When we awoke the next morning we were now hungry and wet. It was raining much harder. So much so that we'd slid in our sleep down the hill in the mud. Our sleeping bags were completely useless now. Yes, the famous mud of Woodstock lore was now a reality, made worse, I expect, from the hundreds of thousands of people trampling the ground literally everywhere.

So, my only memories of the second day are of being cold, wet, and hungry. We did hang around for music and I'm pretty sure I remember Janis Joplin, but even though I had not taken any drugs I might have well have done so. I was on a kind of drug free trip that day. Finally, Dave and I both had had enough by the afternoon sometime, or maybe the evening. We struggled back to his car and headed out. Somewhere along the line, we took a detour - he suggested we go to Gettysburg (for some reason), I topped it by offering Washington, DC. So, off we drove towards DC. We arrived, burst in on my sister's and cousin's apartment, stayed the night, then drove back home the next day.

During the night, someone broke into Dave's car and ripped out the 8 track; no Marrakesh Express on the way home. But I had music in my head, and now - in my soul.

In 2007, I made a brief return to the site of the concert. It was raining....

British super-duper group Blind Faith releases its one and only album, which I buy immediately - and am lucky to get a copy with the original, highly-scandalous cover (which I still have).



Actress Sharon Tate and four others are murdered in her home in Los Angeles on August 9 by followers on Charles Manson. Tate, who was married to Polish film director Roman Polanski, was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Manson and most of his followers were arrested for the crime, and others, later in the year.

Category 5 Hurricane Camille slams into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, killing 248 people and causing billions of dollars in damage. The storm has sustained winds of 190 mph.It remains the strongest storm on record to strike the U.S. mainland.

Woody Allen's film Take the Money and Run premiers in New York City on August 18. It is Allen's first film with total creative control - as actor, director, and writer.
On August 14, the Chicago Cubs, winner of the 1908 World Series and winless ever since, held an 8 1/2 game head over the St. Louis Cardinals and a 9 1/2 game lead over the New York Mets. What happened over the next month haunts Cubs fans until this day.

The last weekend of the month I headed north to Potsdam to begin college.

July, 1969

Man walks on the moon - July 20. I wish that I could say that I followed this monumental event with rapture and awe, but that weekend I was attending summer orientation incoming freshmen at Potsdam State. I managed to see small bits and pieces of the unfolding drama on television, but my memory is that they kept us pretty busy, and honestly - I don't think that I was all that interested in the whole thing. I was busily plotting my future. I don't even think that I actually saw the initial moonwalk "live." I do recall looking up at the moon that night and thinking how wondrous it was that two men were actually on its surface.

And to be honest, the event seemed somewhat anticlimactic now that that old dog Nixon was in The White House. The space program was started by John F. Kennedy and continued by Lyndon Johnson. I had followed the whole time with great pride and fascination - from the launch of Alan Shepard in 1961 (which I heard on the radio) through the dramatic circling of the moon at Christmas in 1968. Now Nixon was in office when the moon landing finally took place and it did seem fair. Did I mention ever here that I was not a fan of Nixon?

They did issue us with beanies that week in orientation, which I suspect was the last time this tired old ritual was conducted at this or virtually any other college. They were never worn. It seemed to me that many older people did not understand that by this time the times were no longer changing. They had changed.

Other vestiges of typical college life one might see in films from the 1930s and 40s also still existed - segregated dormitories, curfews for girls and not boys, a strong-willed Dean of Women - all these would be soon gone - certainly by the time of the student strikes following the killings at Kent State the following Spring.

I remember that Summer as being very hot - at least by typical standards of upstate New York. Mindy and I went one day on a steam train excursion for a lark, and we sat listlessly in the car simply fried by the heat and humidity. No one I knew at that time had air conditioning - either in home or auto. It was generally a rare time when it was needed in upstate New York.

That summer we spent a lot of evening playing miniature golf at an Arnold Palmer putting course in nearby Penfield. It was a fun thing to goof around and pass some time. I was pretty good at it, and wound up qualifying for a locally televised tournament that summer. First prize was a small color television. I don't believe our family had yet made the switch to color, so winning one would have been sweet. Oddly enough, I played the "round of my life", at least for the first 16 or so holes. I was leading. Handily - I started hearing the television announcers saying "get the camera on Donovan, on Donovan." Sadly, the pressure got to me and my lead began to shrink. Some guy caught me on the last hole and we went into extra holes. I missed a short put, finished second, and won a radio. Wow.



Firesign Theater releases its 2nd album How Can You Be In Two Places At once When You're Not Anywhere At All, which features Nick Danger, 3rd Eye” in episode #666 Cut ‘em Off At The Past. I spent far too many happy hours listening to their extremely funny albums over the next years, usually in a stoned revelry.

On July 18, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, on the eastern end of Martha's Vineyard. Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in the car, dies in the accident. Kennedy did not report the accident to authorities the next day. He later plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was handed a suspended sentence.



In his first news conference since becoming President Nixon's chief legal officer, Attorney General John N. Mitchell announces that the incidence of wiretapping by federal law enforcement agencies had gone down, not up, during the first six months of Republican rule. Mitchell refused to disclose any figures, but he indicated that the number was far lower than most people might think. "Any citizen of this United States who is not involved in some illegal activity," he stated, "has nothing to fear whatsoever." The nation sighed in relief.

Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones dies on July 3. Found motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool, the cause of death was famously noted as "death by misadventure" by the local coroner. That same month, the band releases one of the greatest singles of all-time, Honky Tonk Women. I thought that the guitar intro riff was absolutely spectacular and that July would turn up my car radio whenever it came on.

AM radio still ruled the airwaves back then. We listened mainly in those days to stations WBBF and WSAY, both featuring Top 40 songs. I am pretty sure that by then, or at least soon after, we had our own "underground" FM station in Rochester that played album rock - WCMF-FM. My car had only AM and one had to rig up an FM receiver, which I did the next year when I bought a used Post Office Ford Econoline van.

Born on July 24, actress Jennifer Lopez.

Reaching number 2 on the U.S. pop charts that months - Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat & Tears. The band's self-titled album went on to win a Grammy award for Album of the Year.

The Doors release The Soft Parade LP on July 18.

On July 24, Muhammed Ali is convicted on appeal for refusing induction into the armed services. As he famously said in 1966: "I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong ... They never called me nigger." The conviction was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I had answered the advertisement I'd seen in The New York Times and had sent - I think $48.00 - for two tickets to the Woodstock Music and Art fair, to be held the following month downstate. I talked to a number of friends about the idea of going, but could only find one other brave soul who was up for it - Dave Fisher.

I kept my useless tickets for some years, which weren't needed there once the crowds exceeded the capacity of the Festival to control admittance. They were safely in a drawer in my room at home until, like much of the stuff that might be collector's items today (hundreds of comic books, Mad Magazines, baseball cards, etc.), they were disposed of my my mother, who - in her usual term - "gave them the pitch."

On July 30, President Nixon makes his one and only visit to South Vietnam. Pictured below is a man wearing a Nixon rubber mask and Peter Sellers dressed for his role some years before as Dr. Strangelove. I'm not kidding - You be the judge.

June, 1969

Sometime that month - I graduate from Wayne Central High School. It was likely around the middle of the month. I have only the vaguest memories of the event. But we boys took pride in the sexual connotation of graduating in '69' even though such activities were limited to our erotic fantasy lives. I don't know of one friend at that time who'd actually had sex. At that time, at that place, sex remained something elusive and futuristic, much to our group disappointment. The caption on my yearbook casual photograph read: "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil - but think about it." Some crack yearbook staff member knew me pretty well.

In my teens I became a huge fan of W.C. Fields - I thought that he was the funniest person who'd ever lived, even though he's been dead for 20 years. I collected records, posters, photos, books, stationery - anything I could get my hands on. Friends even called me W.C. I would do W.C. Fields routines I'd memorized from records at parties ("I cut a path through a wall of human flesh, dragging my canoe behind me!") . I was a nut.

The photo of me and W.C. above, taken in 1968, shows me wearing a flowered Nehru-style shirt I'd bought the year before on a visit to my sister in Washington, DC. I still have one of the original Personality Posters of Fields, now framed and loaded with numerous tack marks on all four corners, hanging on the wall to my right as I write this. Posters were big back then - there was a very cool poster/head shop in Rochester which I loved to visit I think that it was on East Avenue. My room had the Fields posters, the Richard Avedon black and white poster of The Beatles, Bob Dylan with the multi-colored electric hair, Simon and Garfunkel. Many LPs had posters inside in those days and that was an added bonus - more things to pin on the wall.

My parents would get a copy of the Sunday edition of the New York Times without fail every week - my father would pick up a copy on the way home from church. Church was mandatory in our house, the it was a time when you were still expected to dress up for church. That month or thereabouts, an advertisement in the Arts and Leisure section caught my eye:

Sounded good to me. I was 18 and free, so why the hell not? I began to formulate a plan....

Hee Haw debuts that month in CBS. Hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, it featured a mix of country music and corny rural comedy. It was the complete opposite of hip, but fit right in with President Nixon's "silent majority" crusade. The country was completely polarized - gone was the idealism and optimism of the Kennedy years.

In 1969, Reader's Digest sent some 18 million flag decals to its subscribers, and they quickly became a big hit. Plastered on windows and car window vents, they were popular among the pro-Nixon, pro-war crowd - The Silent Majority. The system worked quite well if you were hitchhiking, which I did often in my college years. The best rides came from vans bearing peace stickers; if you were picked up by a car with a flag decal, you could expect - at the very least - a lecture regarding your hair and attire, the war, whatever.

One June 8, after years of steady increases, President Nixon announces the first withdrawal of troops from Vietnam - 25,000 out of a force near 550,000.

The Love Theme from 'Romeo and Juliet' reaches number one on the charts. This movie absolutely knocked me out - I thought it was brilliant. Mindy and I would actually watch it at the drive-in rather than make out, though truth be told I would have loved to have had the nerve at that time to have wonderful naked sex like the two lovers in the film. I still remember the echoes of the last line of the Prince in the town courtyard - "all are punished." Powerful stuff for a young catholic boy. It would take me some more years to shed my catholic upbringing, but the walls were beginning to slowly crumble. Too slowly.

The Weathermen formed as a radical offshoot of the 1960s student activist group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). A manifesto, which circulated around a June 1969 SDS convention, took its title from Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," it read, and thus became known as the Weatherman statement.

On June 22, legendary singer and actress Judy Garland dies at age 48 of an overdose.

Born on June 15 - future rapper Ice Cube.

During a Bed-In for Peace on June 1 in Montreal, John Lennon, along with Yoko Ono, Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, and others, records Give Peace a Chance, which is released soon after as the first solo recording by one of The Beatles.

Warren Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, ending the activist era known as the (Earl) Warren Court.

On June 28, the Stonewall Riots in New York City mark the beginning of the gay rights movement.

In Houston, Texas, Army veteran Orville Moody wins the U.S. Open by one stroke. Moody was the last golfer to win the event by first having to qualify through local and regional events. It was his only PGA tour career victory.

There was another great local band in the area which, sadly, I don't think I ever saw perform live, but it's also quite possible that I did and simply can't remember due to the ever-increasing number of misfiring neurons in my aging brain. Wilmer Alexander and The Dukes were almost legendary in Upstate New York in the late 1960s. Originating out of Geneva, NY, the Dukes had a couple of singles which reached the charts nationally, or at least "bubbled under the hot one hundred." Those of us living in Upstate remember them fondly - they were big on the bar and college scene at the time. Legend has it that they were the inspiration for the bar band in the film Animal House. The band released their one album in 1969. The times were a changin' and the times were rocking.