Memories of '68, Part 3

"Who was the presidential candidate shot last night in California?" Mr. Briggs asked the class as we leaned over our paper taking a "pop-quiz."

Billy immediately shouted, "Is Bobby Kennedy dead?"

Mr. Briggs turned red and walked over to Billy’s desk, taking his test and writing a big ZERO across it. I really don’t think Billy meant to give us the answer. He was concerned for Kennedy and our teacher’s pop quiz on news events reminded Billy of the terrible truth. America had just experienced its second assassination of the year.

Billy and his family were the only supporters of Robert Kennedy I knew and this event is my first memory of the ’68 election year. I don’t remember the New Hampshire primaries although I do remember hearing of Eugene McCarthy, he didn’t become real to me until 8 years later when I met him while in college. I don’t even remember LBJ bowing out of the elections. But I remember Robert Kennedy's assassination mainly because Billy and his parents were diehard supporters.

And I do remember the summer of ’68. We took our required summer trip to Baltimore. My father’s company’s regional office was there and we often made the trip for the company picnic followed by sightseeing in Washington DC and surrounding area. By the time I quit going on family vacations, I’d been through the Smithsonian a dozen times, and still enjoyed the trips. We stayed outside of DC and I remember my father questioning people where it was safe to go and not to go. I’m not sure what we saw in the city, for these summer trips are all mixed up. That summer I also remember watching parts of the political conventions, the Republicans in Miami and the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Who could forget Chicago?

At the end of the summer, I started my last year at Bradley Creek Elementary School in Mrs. Graham’s sixth grade class. Interestingly, the same gang of us guys was together again, the only difference this year is that Mark, and Carl and I were made members of the "safety patrol." This meant that we got to wear badges on webbing that stretched over our shoulder and patrol the playground and take our turn helping people cross the intersection near the school. We weren’t surprised that Carl was picked, but Mark and I were both shocked, along with everyone else. After all, we’d been partly responsible for Mr. Briggs downfall as a teacher (see part 1). Yet we assumed our position of authority with an attitude that would soon come back and bite us. I don’t remember if it happened in ’68 or ’69, but at the end of one of the sixth week reporting periods, when both Mark and I received unsatisfactory conduct grades, we were called into the principal’s office. He started telling how disappointed he was in us. He said we needed to set an example for the other students. I really think he was going to give us another chance, but we got smart with him and he asked us for our badges. We were no longer members of the elite safety patrol; we were now martyrs.

About this time there was a TV show about the life of a US Calvary Soldier out west who was court-martialed. The show didn't last long, but I think it was titled "Branded." And that’s what we said happened to us. We were branded and although we’d lost some privileges and didn’t get to go on the end of the year beach picnic for safety patrol boys from all over the county, we had new respect upon the playground.

If the ’68 election depended upon the kids at Bradley Creek Elementary School, George Wallace would have won hands down. Most of us were voting like our parents and even parents like mine who wouldn’t allow the N word to be used in our home were lining up behind this third party candidate that assured Nixon, the Republican who was considered unelectable, would inherit the White House. I don’t really remember much about the campaigning that took place in the fall. What I do remember is that after the elections, sitting with my maternal grandmother at her kitchen table, listening to her lament over voting for Wallace. She realized that she had helped elect a Republican. Even with my little knowledge about politics, I knew Wallace was a lot closer to Nixon than to Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic candidate. When I questioned my grandmother why she would have voted for Humphrey instead of Nixon, she told me about the depression and Roosevelt. As a Democrat, she regretted abandoning the party. After our little chat, I started asking around and found that a part of my dad’s family were Republicans also due to Roosevelt. They hated Roosevelt because they’d lost money in one of the banks that "he closed." None of this "yellow-dog" politics made much sense to me at the time.

Stay tuned. I have to write more. Christmas and New Years were bittersweet, as the Hong Kong flu contributed to the death of two of my great-grandparents.

Memories of '68, Part 2
Memories of '68, Part 1