By BRENT ENGELHannibal Courier-Post
Posted Jul 10, 2009 @ 05:32 PM
Hannibal, MO — Living in the moment often does not allow people to fully comprehend a sense of importance.Only time can shape opinion and make reflections meaningful.
But if one season proved to be an exception it was the Summer of 1969.The Moon, Vietnam, Woodstock, Chicago Seven, Chappaquiddick, Miracle Mets.Hippie culture, Hurricane Camille, Manson Murders, My Lai.The list of milestones could go on and on.It was a transformative time in the lives of millions of Americans, and some of the consequences still resound today.
Terry Sampson, executive director of the Hannibal Area Chamber of Commerce, was one of the many whose lives changed 40 years ago.If America lost its innocence during the friction of 1968, it was forced to grow up during the rancor of 1969.
“It really seemed like a changing time in our country,” Sampson recalled. “A lot of different attitudes were permeating our country.”
Moon landingAsk just about any adult over the age of 50 and they can tell you exactly where they were.On July 20, the Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle” landed on the Moon.
An unheard of 500 million people around the world watched the hazy black and white pictures on television as Neil Armstrong spoke words for the ages.“That’s one small step for man...one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong’s voice crackled.
The Hannibal Courier-Post reported the event as “unforgettable” under a huge headline that read “Men Land On Moon.”“The picture was black and white and somewhat jerky, but it recorded history,” the newspaper reported.The Courier-Post considered the event such a precedent that it ran a front-page color photo of a simulated moon walk in the July 21 edition.
While standard today, color newspaper photos were extremely rare in 1969 and involved a lengthy and tedious production process.The Ice House Theatre in Hannibal stopped its performance of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” so that patrons could watch the landing on a TV that was wheeled into the auditorium.
“After having seen the moon adventure, the Mark Twain classic continued on the stage,” the newspaper noted.The only other news on the Courier-Post’s front page on July 21 was a two-column weather report and a tiny box that advised readers where they could find a story about an accident in which a former campaign aide named Mary Jo Kopechne drowned after a car driven by Sen.
Edward Kennedy ran off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass.Sampson recalls that in 1969, former President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 challenge to reach the moon by the end of the decade was still too much for some to comprehend.
“A lot of people at the time questioned whether it was really happening,” he said. “It was so surreal.”Sampson said the moon landing was the “birth of technology” for a generation that grew up to develop or refine computers and communications equipment that are a normal part of life today.
Going to warBack on earth, Don Patrick was hoping his number would not be called.Patrick, who is now the chief executive of the social service agency North East Community Action Corporation based in Bowling Green, was just another young man with a draft card in 1969.When his number was called, Patrick underwent training at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Lee, Va.Shortly after Christmas, he was shipped to Vietnam and assigned to an Army air base in the embattled Mekong River Delta.
“I was right in the line of fire,” Patrick recalled.The base was a main supply depot, and the Vietcong often targeted it for mortar fire.
“The scariest time of my life was when I got caught in the middle as the mortars were flying all around me,” Patrick said. “The noise and the shattering of the ground...it was the scaredest I’ve ever been.
There are no atheists in a foxhole.”Patrick said the men he served with were not the “dopeheads and baby killers” popularized in Hollywood films about the war.“I thought the American G.I. handled himself very, very well,” Patrick said.
“Our cause was right.”Patrick believes President Richard Nixon’s 1969 decision to bomb Vietcong supply routes in neighboring Cambodia saved American lives.“I was very appreciative of that,” he said. “We were protecting our people.”Honorably discharged in 1972, Patrick returned to college and has since served in several administrative capacities.He joined NECAC in 1985, and still stays in touch with many of the friends he made in high school and during his Army service.
“What I had feared the most was going into the military,” said Patrick, who was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery and other medals. “Yet, it was the most maturing experience that ever happened to me.”
Leaving homeAs a child, Mike Marx dreamed of directing or producing films.But it was a long way to Hollywood from his family’s farm and produce stand in East Hannibal, Ill.Still, Marx was determined.“I felt there was no way I was going to stay here and be a farmer,” he recalls. “That was not my calling. I had that desire to do something in the entertainment world. It was in my blood.”
got management experience organizing concerts and dances at Hannibal’s Admiral Coontz Armory.While attending college in California for a year, he met people who would soon have an impact in the movie business. One classmate was the actress Teri Garr.
After a stint in the Navy, Marx was working in 1969 as a claims adjuster for a St. Louis insurance company.During a February vacation trip to Los Angeles, he applied for jobs at several talent agencies, public relations firms and the three television networks.On June 1, he got a call from one of the top agencies on the West Coast, Rogers Cowan & Brenner.
“That was my ticket,” Marx said. “When I said I was going, my mom said ‘Well, just tell me when so I can have your clothes ready.’ I wanted to be a producer or director, but I left with the idea that wherever I could get my foot in the door, I would take it.”From a meager start in the mailroom at Rogers, Marx worked his way into jobs at different companies.
Finally, he started his own agency and spent the next quarter-century working with stars such as Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Tony Curtis, Janet Lee, June Allyson and Dean Martin.He also worked with musical acts such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane and many Motown artists.Marx has some advice for today’s young people, and says it’s no different than when he started out.“Everybody should follow whatever their dream is,” Marx said.
“You can always go back home, but you can’t always go after your dream.”Getting marriedOne social change wrought by the 1960s was the view of marriage.Hannibal natives Vickie Bridges and her husband, John, were 19 when they took their vows on July 18, 1969.
“There were a lot of kids my age that married young and started families,” Vickie Bridges said. “A lot of kids today wait to get married.”The Census Bureau backs her up. The median age for first marriages now is 26 for women and 28 for men, the highest since the agency started keeping records in the 1890s.
The Bridges’ wedding almost didn’t happen.The couple had hoped to have the ceremony in May, but a spring visit to the doctor revealed John Bridges had skin cancer. While in the hospital, he got a staph infection.Recovery took a few weeks, and the Bridges settled on July 18.T
hey watched the moon landing while on their honeymoon and her wedding picture is featured in that July 21 edition of the Courier-Post.John Bridges served in the Navy, and his wife followed him to Norfolk.“When I got married and I went with him to Virginia, we just had a great time,” Bridges remembers. “It was about like high school. It was a fun time.”
Bridges remembers being “grateful” that her husband’s sports prowess led to a stint with the Navy basketball team and kept him out of Vietnam.When the couple returned to Hannibal in 1972, Bridges was pregnant.For almost 30 years, she’s been with HNB Bank and is now an assistant vice president in the loan department. He works in quality control at Continental Cement.
One cultural change that Bridges hasn’t fully accepted has been technology.She has a cellphone, but rarely uses it. She works with the latest equipment in her office, but doesn’t have a home computer.
“You couldn’t have a young child at home today and not have one,” Bridges said.It all seems ironic.The child Bridges was carrying when she and her husband returned from his Navy stint is now a computer information systems manager.
Does she mind being a technology-challenged?“Not particularly,” she said with a laugh.Calling JimiJust two weeks before the biggest rock concert in history, Bill Maxwell talked with one of its stars.Maxwell will recount the conversation in a program at 7 p.m. July 18 at Railroad Park in Vandalia, his hometown.
The presentation is part of the events surrounding the Smithsonian exhibit “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music,” which is on display through Aug. 8.In 1969, Maxwell lived in New York City, working as a theater technical director and an astrologer.
Call it persistence or the luck of the stars, but Maxwell got to talk with Jimi Hendrix just days before the rock musician played at Woodstock.“He couldn’t have been nicer,” Maxwell remembers.
“He was really hot at the time. He was huge.”Organizers of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair planned the three-day event for a 600-acre dairy farm near the town of Bethel in upstate New York.About 186,000 advance tickets were sold, costing $6.50 to $18 depending on the number of days.
An estimated 400,000 to 500,000 attended.Maxwell said Woodstock “was the culmination of all the earlier stuff in the ‘60s” and reflected the cooperative spirit of young people.“It was kind of a frantic time, in a way, but it was not hostile,” he said.
Four months later, the Hells Angels stabbed to death a fan at a Rolling Stones concert and in September 1970, Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit.In a way, Hendrix’s sad ending mirrored his atrocious performance slot at Woodstock.
Logistical problems and weather delays pushed the dynamic guitarist’s show to Monday morning. By then, more than half of the audience had left.Still, Maxwell recalls an incredibly talented man who had sounded full of life just days before lighting up the stage.
“You never heard anything like that before or since,” he said.EpilogueMany who came of age in 1969 believe the year helped set the tone for the generations to come.The eventual withdrawal from Vietnam made American leaders more cautious about becoming engaged in overseas conflicts.
The influence of the drug culture can still be seen today in the hollow stares and rotten teeth of meth users.Technology continues to astound, and yet it causes ethical and moral concerns when the boundaries are pushed to the limit.
Some of the seemingly ephemeral aspects of that watershed year have had a lasting impact.“That year, to me, seemed like an extremely active year,” Sampson said. “It was a volatile time.”
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