1969, A Lot in Common With 2024

 Dear Family and Friends:                                                                        Nov. 2024 

I went to Israel to study in September, 1969.  A lot of things happened that year.  The best was that I met my future wife, Juca.  The worst was that the Vietnam war was raging.  People were being drafted left and right.  The previous January, just as I was about to be drafted, I luckily got a job teaching in an inner-city school in Chicago.  About that same time our government instituted a draft lottery for the coming year, 1970.  They drew birthdays out of a hat (actually, I think it was a shoe box).  All those born on the first birthday drawn were number 1; the first to be drafted that year.  My birthday came up number 199.  All of the draft counselors in Chicago advised that anyone with a birthday drawn higher than 145 should give up their deferment, and enter the lottery, because 145 birthdays worth of people would fill the ranks of the military and the rest of those in the lottery were done, never to be drafted.  On December 31st I gave up my teacher’s deferment and entered the lottery.  But the military didn’t stop drafting people at birthday 145.  They stopped at 194.  I was 199.  Juca and I were married on December 27, 1970.  Four days later I was exempt for life from military service.   

I am thinking about this because in those times our country was very divided.  Most of us younger people were demonstratively against the war.  Many left the country and moved to Canada.  On the one hand there was 1967’s summer of love.  We were urged to come to San Francisco and wear flowers in our hair.  The play, “Hair” told us it was the dawning of the age of Aquarius.  Peace was going to guide the planets and love would steer the stars. Flower power, free love, burning draft cards, and Woodstock was the younger generation’s counter culture reaction to what was happening in Southeast Asia.  Dr. Leary preached, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”  Many did just that. 

On the other side of the generation gap the popular slogan was, “America, love it or leave it.”  My own parents could not understand my protests against the government.  The best example of this turmoil was the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the summer of 1968, which led to the trial of the Chicago 7.  You can Google all of this and even watch a Netflix movie of the trial. There was little confidence in our government and absolutely none in our President, Richard Nixon (who later resigned because of the Watergate scandal).  Our country was plagued with doubt, anger, division, and even rebellion.  It was a terrible time. 

Somehow, we managed to live through it all.  Somehow, we continued to be a nation (however divided).  Somehow, we survived.     

Juca and I have a wooden sculpture that sits on our piano that says in Hebrew, “Gam Zeh Yavor,” meaning, “This too shall pass.”  That was the hope in 1969.   And, so it is these days.  Now we need to, once again, bring on the age of Aquarius.   

“Be strong, let us strengthen one another.”                                                                       

 Ron