1968
From a kid of 1968, with a nod to Today
1968 was a hellish year, and I was just a kid. Maybe the present day is trying to outdo it. We can only hope it will fall short of 1968’s year of shadows.
Since I’d started kindergarten, my family had lived in a small town in western New York State. My dad was pastor of a small yet historic church. We lived in the parsonage across the Main Street. My two older sisters were entering into their adult-ish years. My older sister graduated in 1967, then we moved twice in the next two years.
Back then I didn’t know why we moved, I just knew that I hated changing elementary schools so late in the game. There had been racial strife in that small town. Our family was swept up in it, but only later did I figure out why. It got serious when the Gill family joined our church. They were black. The first ever black family to join. They were a sweet family, had an older sister, two brothers my sisters’ ages, and a boy my age. The sister got married in our church, and that raised a few eyebrows. But she’d married a black man. The oldest brother was a star on the high school basketball team. Athletic, charismatic, and very popular. He worked at a church summer camp. All good.
But when he started dating a white girl, all hell broke loose. Bottom line, they left, we left. Though our families remained friends. Other people had left our small town too — mostly older kids my sisters’ ages. Boys went to die in Vietnam, or come back forever changed. Others left to avoid that fate. Some went to California to become hippies. They were my friends’ older brothers and sisters. Some burned their draft cards. Some moved to Canada to avoid fighting in the jungle for whatever reason? Mainly the president, known as LBJ, said we needed to fight.
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By 1968, I learned that my hometown was a reflection of what was happening all over the country. There had been race riots, and they were getting more violent. North Korea captured a US ship and its crew. They would not be released until year’s end. The US started losing the Vietnam war. There were anti-war protests. Student protests. Women’s rights protests. Poor protests. Even riots in Paris. Police beat them all back to restore law and order. Some protestors were killed. Meanwhile, kids were going to rock concerts, taking drugs, and who knew what else they were doing that I wasn’t allowed to do? Everybody knew the country was more divided than ever, and it would never go back to the way it was before. If they’d only known what was just ahead.
The president said he was going to quit. He wouldn’t run for reelection. LBJ was hated, and he knew it. The only good thing he’d be remembered for was signing Civil Rights legislation, but that was really not his doing. Martin Luther King had been the champion for racial equality, and had won many peaceful victories. MLK had now turned his attention against the Vietnam war. Then he was shot dead. There was grief. There was anger. But another hero was rising. People rallied around Robert Kennedy, who would surely be the next president, just as his older brother had been. Then he was shot dead, just as his older brother had been. JFK’s funeral is the first thing I remember watching on TV.
In late summer 1968, the Democrat party had their presidential convention. Instead of Eugene McCarthy, the peace candidate, DNC leaders pushed former vice-president, Hubert Humphrey into the nomination while riots filled the streets outside the Chicago convention hall. He eventually lost to another ex-vice-president, Richard Nixon, who promised to restore law and order, and end the war.
The most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression began in 1968 too, ending the longest continuous rise in American history. Temporarily forced from the ministry, my dad took a teaching job to pay the bills. He bought an old Rambler we called, the Clunker.
1968 was quite the year to come of age. Every day was a piece of history, though I was too young to put it into context. It was just life. My version of The Wonder Years. So I feel for those growing up in our present dystopia. There are certain parallels to 1968 — the protests, the riots, the brutality in response, the sagging economy, the lack of confidence in leadership, troops overextended in foreign conflicts, the rejection of peace candidates, the opportunism of foreign leaders in the midst of chaos.
Even some who celebrated it all — wanting to burn it all down. So maybe I look at 2025 with different eyes. In fact, it looks eerily like the world I grew up in. But here I am by the grace of God, and blessed in unexpected ways even today.
So I still have hope. Nothing starry-eyed, but still, it’s hope.
