1970, the last great class

On Facebook the people from the class of 1970 had news of the loss of two classmates within a couple of days. 62 is too young to pass away. I am just getting started at 62.  We had a long discussion on Facebook leading from those passings and discussing the need to have our forty five year reunion.  These two classmates were not major players in the scheme of things but were being fondly remembered for their humor and the fact they always had a smile.

I always felt insignificant in school. But as we reminisced yesterday it was evident that those of us who added some levity to our sometimes mundane days were definitely part of the whole high school experience that made everyone who we are today. We all had some part in who we all became as adults.

We discussed with sadness how our senior year was marred with the beginning of renewed racial unrest. How friends became divided based on the color of our skin. One teacher told one of the more studious members of our class that we were to be the last great class to come out of Sandusky High School. It turned out to be true.

Drugs, racial division, LBJ's new world order, and extreme politics were taking shape as the class of 1970 set out to make their mark on the world. We were the last of what had been hope and innocence that finally emerged in the fifties after putting two world wars behind us. Fifties rock, community dances, buzzing the ave evolved into the sixties where music continued to move us with the British Invasion, bubble gum rock, Motown.

But in the background were the assassinations of three great leaders, the Vietnam war, the drug culture, religious introspection, and racism rearing its ugly head. Politics were becoming more corrupt and government was growing.

TV brought war and murder right into our households and pornography was on the rise.

Here we are now, only a shell of what our forefathers had laid out in their hopeful plan for a government of the people and for the people in liberty. Did too much liberty create the chaos or did we just misunderstand the concept of it?

DroneFingers