You are here: Home » Themes » Turbulent Times

Turbulent Times

“

I don’t know where you come in age. But Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and everybody was pretty ticked at that, wanted to get back at them. Bob and I were both 16 years old at that time. In December, 1942 we went together to the Army Air Force recruiting office in […]
“

“The Class of ’43 had graduated…Senior A…walked slowly out of the auditorium and down the front steps…’I’m leaving now, to go out in the world to be shot, riddled with bullets, smashed by tanks, cut open with bayonets, or maybe I’ll be doing these things to other men. I’m going now to fight for the […]
“

Bob and I were thrown into an interesting situation. In the service, I ended up flying B-29s and he ended up a navigator on B-29s. I wanted as many people and as many propellers around me that I could get, and so I opted for multi-engine. I went to Fort Sumter, New Mexico, and spent […]
“

We went down to Washington for the political science convention, Bob Gaudino and John Rensenbrink and I, and when we came down we couldn’t find a place for the three of us to stay. In those days, if you remember, two men and a woman, there was no way. And I ended up sleeping at […]
“

I do remember the first time that I had a feeling that he had noticed me in any way. There was a man who was going to speak on campus from the Freedom Democratic Party, which was the wing of the Democratic Party in the South, particularly in Mississippi, that had staged an insurrection of […]
“

The end of my freshman year I just called up out of the blue and said, “I’d like to take your course.” And he said, “Why don’t you come over to my house. “And so I went over to his house it was a nice spring day, we sat out on his patio and we […]
“

Well, there was the start of the debates about the Vietnam War. And I remember going to one meeting and it was just the start of the split between Old Left and New Left. Old Left being heavily intellectualized, where people would sit around and debate and you sort of make the case. And the […]
“

I think it was a discussion in class: You know Gandhi had a nephew and there was some protest in the south of India and the nephew said to him that “I’m going to go down and observe the protest.” And Gandhi said to him, “When you see a house on fire, do you observe […]
“

The generally shared perception was of a fairly apolitical quiescent student cohort not only at Williams but elsewhere. That was a reflection in the wider sense of the Eisenhower years. Spring vacation [1960] was the beginning of the Civil Rights sit-ins in the South and Eisenhower had declined to support that—he hadn’t opposed it, he […]
“

“The pickets assembled before the executive mansion at 8 a.m. and formed picket lines on Pennsylvania Avenue. Under instructions from the organizers, each was attired in jacket and tie and conversation was held to a minimum, the orderly processional serving to testify to the seriousness of their purpose. The posters they carried challenged Ike’s stand […]
Next »

CHAPTERS

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Final Note
credits