The Way it Was

           Stan & Ollie "Do the Tighten UP!"         

News Highlights From Our Senior Year (1969-1970)

CBS canceled one of its most popular shows, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, because a copy of the show hadn't reached the censors in time. The network was under pressure to dump the politically potent variety show, which Vice President Spiro Agnew had claimed was "subversive."

Senator Ted Kennedy was charged with leaving the scene of an accident after he drove a car off a bridge in Chappaquidick, Massachusetts. A campaign aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. Kennedy appealed to a TV audience to forgive him.

Millions of Americans participated in a Viet Nam Moratorium Day, with candelight vigils and prayers for peace. President Nixon ignored the event, but Vice President Spiro Agnew called the participants "an effete corps of impudent snobs."

Veterans' Day ceremonies around the country consisted of pro-America demonstrations. Vice President Agnew called U.S. patriots "the silent majority." Three days later, 250,000 people marched on Washington to protest the war. Simultaneously, 100,000 demonstrated in San Francisco. 340 Harvard students took over the university's administration building. 400 state troopers and police officers cleared them out with tear gas and beatings from nightsticks. At Cornell University, a 36-hour sit-in was held in the student union building by black militants brandishing automatic weapons. At Berkeley, a National Guard helicopter dropped caustic chemicals on a protesters' area called People's Park. 19 University of California faculty members were among those burned by the substance.

Max Yasgur's farm near Bethel, New York became the second-largest city in New York, when nearly 400,000 converged on the area for the Woodstock Music And Art Fairduring the first week of August, 1969. Police looked the other way as the counterculture celebrated its largest gathering with peace, music, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Charles Manson and several members of his cult were charged with the brutal summertime 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles. Tate was married to film director Roman Polanski.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman William Fullbright disclosed that the Pentagon and the Nixon administration had been waging an illegal war in Laos, without the required knowledge of the Congress. Meanwhile, Lt. William Calley, Jr. was under investigation on charges that his infantry unit had massacred 450 women, children and other villagers at My Lai, South Viet Nam.

Leonard Bernstein stepped down as director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Judy Garland died of a drug overdose at age 47.

The counterculture-gone-commercial was evident in many of the 1969's hit songs, including Everyday People, Age Of Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In, Come Together, Crimson & Clover and In The Year 2525.

Charmin Bathroom Tissue went from obscurity to America's best-seller, due to an ad campaign featuring grocer Mr. Whipple, portrayed by character actor Dick
Wilson.

In 1970, U.S. troops were withdrawn from Cambodia.

Cigarette ads were banned from TV and radio.

Joseph Yablonski, who had campaigned against corruption for the presidency of the United Mine Workers, was found murdered along with his wife and daughter.

Millionaire H. Ross Perot gave up on his attempt to deliver Christmas presents to American POWs in North Viet Nam via the chartered jet Peace On Earth.

The so-called Chicago Seven were found not guilty of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But five of them were found guilty of crossing state lines for the purpose of inciting a riot, resulting in five-year sentences.

Black militant Angela Davis was indicted on murder and conspiracy charges.

The FBI captured Father Daniel Berrigan, the Rhode Island priest who advocated burning draft cards to protest the Viet Nam war. He and his brother, Father Phillip Berrigan, were accused by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of plotting to kidnap Nixon aide Henry Kissinger and blow up a federal building.

On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops killed four students at Kent State University who were protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Five days later, 100,000 anti-war protesters rallied in Washington.

The Spiro T. Agnew Wrist Watch - bearing the likeness of the vice president - became a hot seller.

The Apollo 13 crew returned to Earth following a harrowing mission in which they repaired their ship with duct tape following an oxygen tank explosion.

The Army appointed the nation's first two female generals.

26 people were killed when Hurricane Celia crossed Florida and the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Construction of New York's World Trade Center was completed.

Hello, Dolly! closed on Broadway after 2,850 performances.

Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel won Grammy awards for Record, Song and Album Of The Year in 1970. Vice President Agnew stated that the song was about heroin addiction.

Other hits included I'll Be There by the Jackson Five, My Sweet Lord by George Harrison, Let It Be by the Beatles and I Think I Love You by TV's Partridge Family.

The Mary Tyler Moore show debuted.

CBS canceled The Ed Sullivan Show.

In September when the Class of 70 went off to college, avant garde rock star Jimi Hendrix died in London of a drug overdose. Less than three weeks later, blues sensation Janis Joplin also died of a drug overdose in a Hollywood motel room. The following year rock vocalist Jim Morrison of the Doors died of a heart attack and Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Page 1     Page 2     Page 3