The Summer of 1969: So What?

Yeh, I know that this summer marks forty years since anyone first set foot on the Moon. Back in the summer of 1969.

Yeh, I know that the Tate-LaBianca murders, instigated by Charles Manson and executed by his flock of murderous all-American young zombies, also occurred forty years ago this summer. In 1969.

Yeh, that so-called “greatest musical concert of all time”, Woodstock, also took place around this time forty years ago, in 1969.

And yeh, the Beatles walked across Abbey Road (Paul shoeless) for their famous album cover in the summer of 1969.

So what? Why is the mass media obsessing on summer, 1969?

True, the Apollo 11 moon mission was a milestone in human achievement. But then-President Nixon, who talked to the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon live from the White House, slashed the Apollo missions, canceling planned moon voyages and ending the last one in 1972. In the 37 years since, all manned space trips have consisted of going in circles closely around Earth.

Manson and Woodstock were certainly symbols of the times back then and are interesting for studying human nature gone awry and for listening to some good music, but our recent history is full of other examples. And album covers...well, they're just album covers.

Why make “40” the anniversary year anyway? Didn’t people used to have to wait until “50” before they did this sort of thing? And speaking of “50”, why aren’t we talking about 1959 anyway?

In 1959, the Cold War between the US and the USSR was going on full strength. Both sides were fighting each other through proxy wars in third world countries, building up their nuclear missile arsenals and designing newer long-range missiles, and engaging in the space race (the Soviets had the edge in 1959). In America, a national campaign had begun to upgrade educational standards in the sciences and encourage development of new young scientists and engineers. If you’re old enough (like me) you may remember those old Bell Science films starring bald bespectacled “scientist” Dr. Frank Baxter, who introduced very interesting, entertaining and inspiring programs about diverse scientific topics such as genetics, subatomic particles, time, the Sun, the weather, the five senses, the circulatory system, and language. These were part of that national effort going on then.

And many, many other events were transpiring in 1959 as well. The civil rights effort was going on full steam, especially in the South, and rock n’ roll music dominated the popular culture.

Is there a sort of disconnect that occurred at some time between 1959 and 1969, making people want to remember the latter while ignoring or forgetting the former? Or maybe it’s something simpler.

Perhaps the emphasis on 1969 is simply due to the fact that far more people around today personally experienced it and remember it. I myself only turned three in the fall of 1959, so my memories of that year are completely confined to my home and family. And of course, I had no idea that I was living through 1959 while I was living through 1959!

But the professional media should take that into account when deciding what to commemorate. I think people would be much more enlightened to hear accounts about—say Castro consolidating his power in Cuba in 1959 while became gradually more estranged with the US in the process—than to hear the same old stories about Woodstock or Manson (or Neil Armstrong’s “that’s one small step for man” verbal goofup).

For many younger people of course, both 1959 and 1969 are years of the past that happened either before they were born or during their early childhood. What I think is the main reason for 1969’s emphasis nowadays is that many of those responsible for putting on these retrospective stories on television, printed media, and radio were old enough to remember the events of that year but too young to remember what went on fifty years ago. But that’s no reason to ignore the very important year of 1959.