Wow…I guess I just feel old. I do not remember this particular event as it unfolded, but I remember the Vietnam War, the bombings in Cambodia, Watergate, etc, and the general tone of the times. This event was very much part of the historical narrative of that time and a significant event in American history. I suppose everything passes with time.
Out of curiosity, was the Vietnam War and the public opposition to it, something you learned about at all in school?
That famous photograph won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the more indelible images of the 1970s. The young girl in the photo was a 14-year-old runaway who wandered onto campus and encountered the protest. She was not participating and did not know the man lying dead on the ground, but while others sort of stood around, she ran up to him screaming, half out of shock, half out of innocence. Of course, she was eventually identified, and she was accused of being a communist “crisis actor” by the wing nuts (including Florida Gov. Claude Kirk), receiving death threats for many years to come. Sound familiar?
You can understand their confusion: anyone displaying any empathy has to be an act, right?
I do. We had a sympathy protest (of sorts) on my VERY sheltered and naive college campus. Of course, that was before I won the draft lottery.
In school is was kinda glossed over. It essentially boiled down to “the war was unpopular and there were many protests” and it was kinda left at that. Things like the war itself and watergate, I have since gone back and read up on in the years since but the rest I have not.
The vast majority of my historical knowledge was not learned in school. My areas of interest have always skewed heavily to older history, ancient, medieval, the last few years I have been more interested in the renaissance time period. I know quite a bit about both World Wars and the lead up to them but everything post WW2, my knowledge is pretty sketchy if I’m being honest.
Primary school history classes are focused on facts and dates and are almost completely worthless.
I know about the transfer portal issue, and apparently they’ve changed their thinking on it but just didn’t have any roster room this year.
I’ve never heard about the recruiting visits thing…that can’t be serious?
Maybe it has changed but in past years if you accepted a scholarship from Clemson, but haven’t actually signed yet and you take a visit somewhere else, Clemson rescinds the offer.
I get that, and I also have an interest in history long ago. I have a minor in history, which focused mainly on the Vikings and Early Middle Age Europe. It’s just funny that what one thinks of as relatively recent events that “surely everyone knows” is “history” to the younger folks. I’m sure my grandparents felt that way about my learning WWII “history”. To them it wasn’t history, it was everyday life.
Yeah, anything that falls around a couple of generations ago is in that weird space where it’s too far in the past to be current events but not so far as to be viewed simply as history. It’s a weird spot. For me, this was 20 years before I was born, it actually falls between the years my parents were born, dad in 69 and mom in 71. My guess is that won’t make you feel less old…
Another Mack parallel
We had an intern in the office this summer…actually a grad student…who had a tattoo on her forearm: “1967”. I asked what it represented, and she said “they year my mom was born. I know, she was really old when she had me.”
Screw all y’all.
Now that’s just rude. I may be 31 but my personality has always skewed older. My wife says I’m the youngest 50 year old she’s ever met, she said this when I was about 25. Probably because I’m very similar in temperament to he 80 year old dad. I am absolutely the get off my lawn type.
My wife has a friend who is your age and is the same way. She’s otherwise a 70-year old lady, but she’s also fairly hip. Or at least used to be. Whenever my wife or I would hear a new term or didn’t recognize a celebrity, we’d have to ask her. She recently married a guy who is like 58, and my wife has pretty much told her that her days as the token young friend are over. Time to slip on the overalls, grab a glass of wine, and talk about how your herb garden is doing this year.
Not related but kinda related.
I grew up on the space coast of Fl and life, especially the economics of my hometown were intertwined with the shuttle program.
As a sophomore in HS I watched the Challenger explosion from the open commons during my lunch hour. We were probably 8-10 miles from the space center.
It always had a huge effect on me.
Fast forward 30 years.
I’m driving to work one morning and the morning DJ announces its the 30th anniversary of the shuttle disaster.
I get to work and ask my coworkers if they remember where they were only to discover none of them had been born yet.
I was at the dentist in the middle of getting a root canal.
Ouch. Probably not something you wanted to remember.
Holy shit, that cannot be!
I was in 6th grade, it was the day after my 12th birthday, and our Principal got on the PA to tell us all the Challenger had blown up. There was an eerie quietness for a moment in our classroom (I was in Mrs. Ambat’s math class that day) as we kids tried to comprehend what had just happened, and then my friend Hilary Munger who was sitting next to me, began balling her head off. Her Dad was the Pima County GOP Chairman (we all make mistakes in life) and their family knew Dick Scobee, the Commander of Challenger, quite well- Scobee got his masters in EE at The University of Arizona and the wake up song that morning for the mission was our fight song at UA, “Bear Down Arizona.”
That moment is seared in my brain and I cringe each time I see replays of the shuttle launch and hear, “Roger, Challenger go for throttle up…”