Not long after, as I recall, were the Kent State University shootings by police during a demonstration. (Expressed so well in Neil Young’s song recording, “Ohio.“  Demonstrations were new to the country at the time, thus seemed very threatening in nature.) Around the same time was the establishment of the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped Patty Hearst and who DID use violence as a means of communicating their dislike of the United States Government.

In the beginning of all of this turbulence, I’d so wanted to be a flower child in California with some of my highschool friends who’d pursued this dream. Not too many years later, I would learn that some of them would never return. Buffalo Springfield’s song, “For What It’s Worth” conveys the turmoil of those times.

Having gotten married and given birth to my baby son, these were not options for me. My son’s life was far too important to risk exposing him to this unchartered and risky territory and I’d really wanted to make my marriage work. Thus, I was never to fulfill my dream of being a flower child. Of course, the Manson murders occurred toward the end of the 60’s and I realized that my dream hadn’t been such a good idea after all. (Clearly, flower children were not all that they’d been cracked-up to be!) I chose my own poison right here in good old Minnesota and it was the legal drug of alcohol, primarily. In retrospect, I thank God that my precious son kept me from going to sunny California to wear flowers in my hair. It seems crystal clear to me that I would’ve been one of the drug fatalities without a doubt as alcohol and other drugs were to become my vice. Yet, upon my recent visit to San Francisco, as I toured the foggy city, the song “If You’re Going to San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie from the 1960’s, played over and over again inside my head. For as I toured the big city I was aware that I was viewing many of the streets on which long ago friends of mine had spent their last days – particularly as I passed through Haight Ashbury.

Some of the Viet Nam vets returned to Minnesota. Many of them missing limbs, most of them very bitter and angry individuals. Many with drug and alcohol problems. Nothing at all like the same boys who’d left us a couple of years earlier.

It’s funny, I’ve always told my children how glad I am that I grew-up in the 1960s . . . because it was a truly exciting time in history. In my experience, the most turbulent time in history to be experienced in our beautiful country of America and I am able to say that, “I was there.” But I truly wonder if those of us who were there don’t all experience a deep and aching pang of sadness looking back at the times when we lost so many.

I came away from the experience of the 1960s with a firm conviction that violence never solves anything and I’m proud to say that I raised my children with that philosophy. I am patriotic and love my country. I never waver where my values are concerned. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to say that I survived the 60s, was able to learn so much and have been blest to have lost so little to those few, never to be forgotten, years in time.”