It's Personal: Remembering JFK
With apologies to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 7, 1941, was my parents' milestone. My baby boomer friends and I grew up in Palo Alto thinking the attack on Pearl Harbor, which FDR characterized as "a date which will live in infamy," could never be exceeded in our lifetime. That is, until that fateful day in Dallas. I was only 15 then, but I remember November 22, 1963 like it was yesterday.
President John F. Kennedy's assassination was a turning point for me. Scenes of the smiling Kennedy waving from his car and the aftermath of his death were televised non-stop for days. Ditto Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald and the president's funeral. There was no escaping the news. I still can see the banner headlines in the afternoon newspapers: "Kennedy Shot" or "Kennedy Dead." Yes, in many cities back then you read one paper in the morning and another before dinner.
America not only mourned the death of a president, I think it's fair to say the nation, as a whole, fell into a deep depression. I know that was the case at my house.
My father was a delegate to the 1952, 1956 and 1960 Democratic National Conventions. He met then-Sen. Kennedy at the '56 convention in Chicago. Two years later, my dad and two of his political cronies were invited to meet JFK in his hotel suite in San Francisco. It wasn't your typical meeting by any stretch. Kennedy, dressed only in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, sat on the edge of the bed and asked them, "Do you want Lyndon Johnson to be the next president?" They all shook their heads. "Good, then you'll be Kennedy delegates." They all said yes.
And support him they did. During a televised news conference the day before JFK officially became the Democratic Party's nominee, I heard my father over the airwaves. "Down in front," he shouted at a reporter. There was no mistaking his voice. I'd heard it many times as he sat in the stands watching my Little League games.
On September 3rd, Kennedy made a campaign stop at the San Francisco Airport. My dad took me with him to watch. Turns out I not only heard JFK speak from the tarmac, I actually shook hands with him afterwards. I was only 11, but remember looking up and thinking, "All is right with the world."
It was the same two months later when my parents took me to the Cow Palace Auditorium on November 2nd. That was the night Kennedy first proposed "a peace corps of talented men and women" who would dedicate themselves to the progress and peace of developing countries. My mom and dad sat in the VIP seats near the stage and I was in the rafters, but that didn't matter to me. It was days before the election and I was sure JFK would win. When he did, there was much celebrating in our house.
I was a sophomore at Cubberley High School when the horrible news came in from Dallas. An hour after the announcement, school was closed. By the time I arrived home, my mother was in tears. I don't remember my father coming home until dinner time. He hardly spoke a word. In fact, he hardly spoke all weekend. It was the first time I witnessed real grief.
I can't believe a half century has passed since President Kennedy's assassination. Nationally syndicated columnist George Will recently wrote, "The bullets fired on Nov. 22, 1963, shattered the social consensus that characterized the 1950s ... because powerful new forces were about to erupt through society's crust. Foremost among these forces was the college-bound population bulge baby boomers with their sense of entitlement and moral superiority ..."
That may or may not be true. All I know is JFK's murder was like a death in my family. It's something I always have taken personally. The way I look at it, writing about politics, like I do today, is my way of honoring the memory of my dad, as well as the spirit of the presidential candidate I remember meeting oh-so many years ago.
-DF
Cubberley High School grads a half-century later
Fifty years ago this month, many of my childhood friends and I graduated from Cubberley High School. When we gathered in Mitchell Park for our 25th reunion, I remember several classmates wondering where all the time had gone.
Today, as we prepare to celebrate our 50th reunion, I'm anxious to see if the old phrase is true: You can take the boy (or girl) out of Palo Alto, but you can't take Palo Alto out of the girl (or boy).
When my high school classmates and I graduated in 1966, we all had big dreams. Some wanted to become architects, doctors, lawyers, real estate mogels or teachers. A few others dreamed of owning their own restaurant or sailing around the world. As near as I can tell, whether they still live in town or 3,000 miles away, most of my friends' dreams came true.
Not surprisingly, a few Cubberley grads didn't live long enough to see theirs materialize. One died months after graduation. Another was killed in Vietnam. Many have passed away due to medical complications. Every time I hear that another classmate has died, I wonder why I am still here and he or she is not?
When I think about the Palo Alto I knew as a boy, I remember swimming at the Greenmeadow Pool, playing football on Thanksgiving morning or riding my bike to Stanford. Most importantly, I think about the self-reliance my friends and I gained from those early "Leave it to Beaver" days. If there were helicopter parents back then, we kids were oblivious. Today, I know too many of them.
One of the most powerful lessons my friends and I learned was how to share. Whether it was splitting our money at the Peninsula Creamery, cutting a Kirk's Burger in half or passing around a comic book from Kepler's Bookstore, we knew what was expected of us. I guess you could say we grew up in a village long before the topic became a political issue twenty years ago between then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and the 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole.
Case in point: Even when I was an undergrad at USC in the late 1960s, I always managed to buy something every summer at Smith's on the Circle. When the cashier would tell me how much I owed, my response typically was, "Put this on my mom's account." It didn't matter that her account had expired, the people at Smith's knew my family. Anyone who tries that today probably will get arrested.
Life certainly was a lot simpler half a century ago. A typical Eichler home most likely sold for $30,000 back then compared to the more than $2 million some fetch today. Gas cost approximately 30 cents a gallon 50 years ago. During the summer of 2012, it was nearing $5 a gallon at some local stations. When my kids ask me for $20 now, I sometimes hesitate. I realize that's not much by today's standards, but it was a lot when I was growing up in Palo Alto. How so? When I sold shoes at Rapp's on University Avenue, I got paid $6 for an eight-hour shift.
Several of my Cubberley classmates never left town. They either inherited their parents' home, or bought it from them, and then raised their children in the same neighborhood they grew up in during the '50s and '60s. For them, the question about "taking Palo Alto out of the boy or girl" is moot.
But for the majority of us who moved away, only to visit every few years, the question is real. When I ask my friends Dr. Bob in Santa Cruz, Jeff in Nevada City, Dick in Michigan, Kathy in Connecticut or Ron in Oregon, they all acknowledge the impact growing up in Palo Alto had on their lives. Ditto for yours truly. Every time I sit down to write a column, I hear the voices of my friends and family loud and clear.
They all say Palo Alto doesn't look the way it did when we graduated from Cubberley in 1966; but, everyone agrees it's great to come back "home" ... especially when it means reconnecting with childhood friends.
-DF
I was a freshman 50 years ago
It can’t be true. Was it really 50 years ago I moved into Town & Gown as a freshman? Growing up in Palo Alto, I always knew I wanted to attend college in Los Angeles. Little did I know that, in 1966, I’d begin my love affair with USC in particular and Southern California in general.
Many of my best friends were made my freshman year. In the dorm, there were about a dozen of us who hung out in each other’s rooms, made midnight burrito runs together, and shared class notes. Seven of us pledged Kappa Sigma on the same night. Just last April, more than 70 of my fraternity brothers and I celebrated our 40th annual BS Open — a weekend of great story-telling and so-so golf.
Life back in ’66 was very different than it is today. The Beatles still were touring, Lyndon Johnson was president, and only a handful of my Trojan classmates knew where Vietnam was. We lived in a bubble back then. Even though Notre Dame beat us 51-0 that fall, ’SC went on to appear in four straight Rose Bowls beginning in 1967.
(Speaking of football, two events from my undergraduate days are etched into my memory. The first was O.J. Simpson’s dramatic 64-yard run against UCLA to win the annual cross-town rivalry, and the second was the NFL launching what eventually would become known as the Super Bowl. Both took place across the street in the Coliseum.)
What also was taking place in those days was a steady escalation of the war in Vietnam. It was the first time Americans could see the effects of war on TV almost as they were happening. The end result was a nation torn apart for years.
Most of my fraternity brothers believed it was vital we fight communism in Southeast Asia. Only a handful disagreed. All that came to a head on Dec. 1, 1969, when the U.S. held its first Vietnam-era draft lottery for young men over 18. I was a senior then, and “won” the lottery that night. Yes, my date of birth was the first picked.
The world my friends and I lived in half a century ago and the world you have inherited are similar, but very different. First, I don’t think ’SC ever will appear in four straight Rose Bowls again; second, there is a real possibility you can elect our first female president this November; and third, CNN has changed the way we view world events in real time. It’s both a troubling time but an exciting time to be a freshman on campus.
Last April, when my Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers and I met as a group, we talked a lot about our kids and grandchildren (some of whom may be your ’SC classmates now.) We also talked about the “good old days.” Even though several of them are 70 now, I can tell you there still is a lot of vigor left in their old bones.
So, to you freshman who are just beginning your journey as a Trojan, I wish you well. Take time to make friends and study hard. Both will serve you well in the years and decades ahead. I ought to know. The last 50 years have gone by in a flash. I’m so grateful my ’SC friends from 1966 still are my friends today.
Fight On!
Denny Freidenrich, Class of 1970, lives in Laguna Beach. He is a contributor to The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C.
I won the draft lottery 50 years ago
December 1 is a day for the record books. On this day in 1881, brothers Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt Earp were exonerated in court for their involvement in the gunfight at the OK Corral. Today also marks the 64th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a public bus in the deep South.
Closer to home, 50 years ago this evening, millions of Americans huddled around their TV sets as the first draft lottery since 1942 got under way. I was a 21-year-old senior at the University of Southern California then and, like every other baby boomer I knew at the time, watched as Rep. Alexander Pirnie of New York randomly picked all 366 dates of birth out of a bowl and then posted each one on a tote board next to a corresponding number (1-366). Within minutes, the relative peace we enjoyed as college students shattered before our eyes
Everything about that dreadful night was surreal. After all, wasn't this the evening 850,000 able-bodied young men, born between 1946 and 1950, learned their fates as continuing students, national guardsmen or worse -- grunts on their way to Vietnam? Turns out Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, David Eisenhower and Dan Quayle were among those watching and waiting.
If your date of birth was among the last 200 or so selected, you were on Easy Street. About the only way you were going to be drafted was if President Richard Nixon himself knocked on your door. But, if your birth date was among the first 150 selected, as mine was, you all but saw your life flash in front of you. I ought to know. I "won" the draft lottery that evening. Yes, September 14 was the first date Mr. Pirnie selected. (So you know, Trump ended up No. 356; Clinton No. 311; Eisenhower No. 10; and, Quayle No. 210.)
Watching the sun come up the next morning, I couldn't help but think about the other earth-shattering events my generation had witnessed on the airwaves. From the launch of Sputnik to President Kennedy's funeral, and from the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show to Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon, television always had brought us together. Now, it was tearing us apart. Fifty years ago, TV was driving home, night after deadly night, the unspeakable images of war into our living rooms -- fracturing the nation's psyche to this day.
Even though every commander-in-chief in the last five decades has sent troops into battle, something continues to gnaw at us. As baby boomers once on the verge of adulthood, the idea of fighting in Vietnam seemed as hideous as turning 30. Today, as seventy-something parents and grandparents, the notion of our children serving in the military seems honorable. But way too much has been written about boomers. Throughout the years, my generation has been the subject of books, plays, movies, musicals and more.
Today, even Wall Street -- once the site of several ugly anti-war protests -- courts us. Now that we have begun inheriting the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever known, investment gurus have us on their radar. Could anything be more ironic?
On one hand, we were the generation of peace and love, out to change the world forever. On the other hand, we have become the spitting image of Mr. NIxon's "silent majority." How else do you explain our silence about the outrageous rise in hate crimes, the unconscionable fleecing of senior citizens or the constant poisoning of our water supplies and coastal shorelines? It's heartbreaking to believe that we baby boomers, once so full of promise, have become more interested in winning the weekly lottery than winning the fight against gun safety, teen pregnancy or illiteracy.
Maybe that fateful night 50 years ago took more out of us than we ever could have imagined. Maybe it didn't. I really don't know. What is clear to me is this: the Earp brothers and Rosa Parks knew what it meant to fight the good fight on December 1. I wonder if my USC fraternity brothers, with whom I watched the draft lottery take place half a century earlier, feel the same way I do today -- that it's time to honor our generation's credo and enlist in the war on opioids, poverty, injustice and cruelty. In a sense, isn't this what we were supposed to be fighting for in Vietnam?
Maybe it's time for another version of the draft lottery. Only this time around, let's make everyone a "winner."
-DF
50th anniversary of the Beatles
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle are too young to remember, but I'm sure two former presidents and their wives do. Quintessential baby boomers George and Laura Bush and Bill and Hillary Clinton don't agree on much, but there is one thing about which I am certain the couples can agree: When the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show 50 years ago, their worlds collided in a frenzy of screams and lifelong dreams.
That's not to discount other watershed events of the '60s, such as the Kennedy assassination, the war in Vietnam, or landing on the moon. But when John, Paul, George and Ringo first belted out their songs on American soil, I'll bet you a dozen electoral college votes that everything changed for all of them that night, just like everything changed for me.
Sunday night, Feb. 9, 1964, an estimated 73 million of us -- an astonishing 40 percent of the available audience, equal to around 125 million in today's viewership -- watched four English lads pound musical history into our lives. The Beatles had arrived, and with them came a sense of joy, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and relief. Only 10 weeks earlier, we had been mourning the murder of JFK.
Before the Beatles invasion, teenage boys sported closely cropped hair, our favorite bands included the Everly Brothers and the Beach Boys, and we still were getting used to Lyndon Johnson. Suddenly, none of that mattered. By Monday morning, change was in the air. Many of us headed off to school that day having decided to let our hair grow longer. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was rocking the charts, and few paid attention to the new president. Sociologists said this phenomenon would pass in a few months. Boy, were they wrong.
Within a year, sideburns were bushy, Beatles paraphernalia had flooded the marketplace, and that war without heroes quietly advanced. By the time I graduated from Cubberley High School in 1966, I was a self-appointed Beatles know-it-all ("... the real meaning behind the banned record cover is ...") and a troubled believer in Vietnam. With the release of "Eleanor Rigby," social commentary played an ever-increasing role in their music.
Four years of college at USC proved challenging yet disillusioning. The Beatles introduced their magical mystery tour as the nightly news simultaneously broadcast the horrors of Indochina into our homes. Beards soon replaced sideburns, and campus riots replaced sock-hops. Songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Hey Jude" weren't simply mega-hits; they were America's new national anthems. Just like George W. and Bill C., my boomer contemporaries, I managed to avoid fighting in Vietnam (despite being selected No. 1 in the 1969 draft lottery).
These were changes that, if you were twenty-something at the time, you spent much of your time absorbing or avoiding. I don't know which of these the former presidents embraced. All I know is the changes were real for me and my generation.
In the beginning, John, Paul, George and Ringo personified baby boomers' brightest hopes. The Beatles bridged the gap between black and white, and young and old. Through them, suburbia discovered drugs and the Boston Pops discovered rock 'n roll. Toward the end of their run, the idyllic images turned to nightmares, much as "Michelle" gave way to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
Some music experts claim the Beatles were responsible for widening the intellectual boundaries of rock, thus making it a more flexible and acceptable art form. I am clearly not smart enough to know whether this is true or not. But I know how music changed, and I know you can hear it in almost every song out today, be it country, hip-hop, or just plain pop.
No one can turn back the clock, so trying to "get back to where you once belonged" is a futile exercise. As the great P.J. O'Rourke recently wrote in Time Magazine, "The majority of Americans alive today hadn't been born yet in the 1960s. But we of a certain age (the age that grips levers of power, pulls strings of purse and has the biggest mouth) can't stop reliving each moment.
"Partly it's the poignancy of the decade. It started so well. Handsome young couple in the White House, recovery from the 1960 recession, the Pill, upbeat message movies like 101 Dalmations and Spartacus, Hugh Hefner's illuminating "Playboy philosophy" and the clean-cut Kingston Trio leading sing-alongs in short-sleeve shirts with big, wide, cheerful stripes.
"Then it went so wrong. Shooting and killing and troops in combat gear, not only in Watts and Detroit but all the way over in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam. Feminists were suddenly angry for some, as far as men could tell, feminine reason. I had to maintain a C average to avoid the draft. Turns out you can't fly after you take LSD. There was a war on poverty. We lost. And it rained at Woodstock."
All true, P.J., but those changes, in ourselves and in our world, are what we have in common. They are what the Beatles symbolized for me, for two former presidents and their wives, and for us all.
-DF
50 years later, Woodstock still defines my generation
Some 50th anniversaries are somber and some are joyful. A few of the most memorable in my lifetime include Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic in 1977, Japan’s 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1991, Russia’s 1957 launch of Sputnik in 2007, President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in 2013, and last month’s celebration of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon in 1969.
According to many historians, that summer of ‘69 also helped to forever define my baby boomer generation. Utter the word “Woodstock” and most people older than 60 can tell you where they were when that historic rock concert was happening in upstate New York.
I was taking a summer school class between my junior and senior years at USC. At night, I watched the evening news from my apartment in Los Angeles. At one point, I remember asking myself, “How is it possible hundreds of thousands of people are at Woodstock?”
It’s funny how music, politics, and war intersect every decade or so. What was true for those born before 1946, certainly is true for my childhood friends and college fraternity brothers. Vietnam, the Beatles, Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Woodstock represent life-altering people and events for my baby boomer generation.
To this day, I’m not sure America has fully recovered from the deep, psychological shock of losing the war in Southeast Asia. For greying rockers, Liverpool Hope University now offers a 12-week masters degree on the Fab Four. The Berlin Wall (once a real-life symbol of the struggle between good and evil) no longer exists, and movies, books, and plays about the only commander-in-chief to resign the presidency continue to receive critical acclaim.
And then there was Woodstock, that quintessential event and gathering place in Bethel, New York.
Now that 50 summers have come and gone, it seems like a good time to reflect on Woodstock’s meaning and lasting impact. In basic terms, Woodstock exemplified the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 32 of the best known musicians of the day performed during that rainy, mid-August weekend in front of peaceful, stoned and, yes, sometimes naked concertgoers.
Singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell captured it all when she wrote, “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong.”
One of the bands that played the fateful weekend was Santana. I grew up with Gregg Rolie, the group’s keyboard player (we went to elementary, junior high, and high school together in Palo Alto). To Gregg’s everlasting credit, he always will be remembered for singing Santana’s mega-hit “Black Magic Woman.” Today, years after helping to create Journey, Gregg often can be found touring with Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band.
Despite attempts to replicate what happened half a century ago on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm, the original extravaganza has proven to be unique and legendary – dare I say mythological? So much so, millions of people worldwide believe it was one of the greatest events of the last hundred years.
Whether it was or wasn’t, that is for the historians to decide. All I know is Woodstock was one of those rare combinations of words and feats that truly helped define my generation.
To me, Woodstock was more about the times than it was about the music. Because I was nearly 21 then, most of my friends and I were constantly trying to figure out ways to avoid going to Vietnam. (Interestingly, so was one Donald J. Trump.)
Unlike our fathers and grandfathers who fought in two world wars and Korea, my baby boomer generation lived a life of divided loyalties. By the late 1960s, the America those old soldiers were willing to die for had morphed into a nation of non-believers. At the same time people were trekking off to Woodstock, millions more were making a conscious decision to publicly oppose the war in Vietnam.
If the divide between war and peace wasn’t enough, there was another divide pushing its way to the forefront of the American psyche. It was the civil rights movement and its principled stand on what was law and what was order. It was a time when my generation purposefully asked if the values of justice and freedom actually existed in this country. Clearly, one of the best ways to answer those questions was through music. Thus, I submit, it was no accident Woodstock happened when it did.
Woodstock wasn’t a beginning or an end. It was a living, breathing transition between two Americas, two ideals, and two ways of thinking about the world. In some ways, it felt like the net result of my formal schooling and upbringing. If that is true, then it’s no wonder why Woodstock – the name and the event – has left such a defining imprint on my generation.
-DF
Remembering Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin speech
Fifty years ago this evening, President Lyndon Johnson announced on national television that U.S. naval forces had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin.
That incident was, for all intents and purposes, the excuse Johnson had been waiting for to dramatically increase America's presence in Vietnam. I was 15 and home alone in Greenmeadow when the president spoke on TV. I remember looking out my window that night wondering if W.W. III was about to begin?
Much has been written about LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin speech and the veracity of the events leading up to it. Top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any Aug. 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the region, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to "freak weather effects," "almost total darkness" and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat."
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who later gained fame as a POW and then as Ross Perot's vice presidential running mate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," Stockdale said years later.
"Our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats. There was nothing there but black water and American fire power," he added.
If Stockdale's claim wasn't damning enough, here's what President Johnson said in 1965: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."
War is not for the faint of heart. Neither is lying to the American public. The impact of LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin speech has haunted us for decades. We ended up losing 58,000 troops in Vietnam because no one in the White House had the guts to tell President Johnson in '64 (or President Richard Nixon later) the war was a losing proposition.
I am 65 and have lived a full life. I wonder how the bulk of the 58,000 Americans killed in action in Vietnam would have lived their lives had they been told the truth about those North Vietnamese PT boats?
-DF
50 years later, the moon landing still inspires
From moon rocks to rock bottom? What a difference half a century makes. Fifty years ago this week, people all over the world watched as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Despite how people coast to coast felt about the Vietnam War back then, we came together as a nation to celebrate what only American ingenuity could produce at the time.
Today, as I watch the spectacle unfolding between President Trump and the four congresswomen of color, I am reminded how much work there still is yet to be done here at home. Ours is not a perfect union, but it is far better than most nations on earth.
Isn’t the search for a better life why Trump’s grandfather and the parents of the four lawmakers under attack came to this country? Asking these duly elected members of the House of Representatives to return to their country of origin not only is wrong-headed, it is un-American.
Neither Mr. Trump nor I will be here 50 years from now, but the four congresswomen in question very well could be. Too bad the president won’t be around in 2069 to celebrate what I’m sure will be their many American accomplishments.
-DF