"June of `68"

by

E.A. Barrera

{Originally published by The El Cajon Eagle - June 5, 1998}

If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget Robert F. Kennedy's funeral. It is the first memory I have, outside my immediate family and life. The constant rhythm of the "Death March" playing as the flag-draped coffin was loaded on board the train which would carry his body back to Washington. My father sitting on the sofa in front of the television with tears in his eyes. I was four years old, one week from turning five. Safe in my living room, watching an image of profound sadness that I could only observe, but not really understand - that was 1968 for me.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden was asked if he'd ever participated in any anti-war protests during the Sixties. He shook his head, laughed and said: "ya know, back then about ten percent of the population were protesting the war, a few were out demonstrating for the war, and the rest of us were just going about our business, living our lives and looking at all the demonstrators as a bunch of nuts and jerks."  

Ten years later, as we observe the thirtieth anniversary of the most agitated year of the Sixties - 1968 - it is important to note that while the rest of the world seemed to be going crazy, most Americans simply tried to live their lives in as peaceful a fashion as possible.  El Cajon and La Mesa were towns which went on with their lives while the world outside rocked with violence and changing times.

In San Diego's East County, life went on in the peaceful manner residents were accustomed to living. The area high schools had their proms in June and picked their homecoming queens that Fall. Grossmont College graduated 343 people that year - the largest class yet in the schools six year history. Families took their kids to Disneyland or the Grand Canyon for Summer vacation. The East County Fair went on at the start of that turbulent Summer without incident.

The big news that year was Wally Boag and the Disneyland Review would be performing. "Let's Go San Diego," a choral group associated with "Up With People" (remember them?) were also performing at the big El Cajon event that year. They would return later in the month to sing during the festivities for "God Bless America Week in San Diego."  

If you were into rock music on June 1st of `68, then you were in luck, since Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention were playing that night down at the Community Concourse Convention Hall. Of course most East Countian's taste in music were not quite so satirically inclined, preferring Herb Alpert's "This Guy's in Love", Richard Harris' "McArthur Park" and the theme from Clint Eastwood's film "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".  

Yet the events of 1968 still resonated within the quiet homes and hearts of East County. It was impossible to completely avoid what was going on. During the first days of that June, thirty years ago just as now, we were involved in elections. But then again, not all elections are equal. After all, the Tet offensive occurred that year. Though it was an American victory, the battle showed we could never win the war in Vietnam. It would simply never end if we tried.

It was the year Lyndon Baines Johnson dropped out of the presidential race. Only three and a half years earlier, he'd crushed Barry Goldwater in one of the biggest landslides in American history. But Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy came close to beating him in that year's New Hampshire primary. LBJ was vulnerable, due to his war in Vietnam, and now he could not muster enough support within his own party for renomination. Like the Tet offensive, even in victory, the seeds of LBJ's defeat were sown in the snows of New Hampshire.

Martin Luther King was murdered that year. Hope seemed to die that year. Hope died with Bobby Kennedy. Thirty years ago this month, Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy each made campaign stops in San Diego as they tried to win the California Primary for the Democratic nomination. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was already well ahead in the delegate count. In those days the parties actually chose their nominees during the Conventions. Winning California was critical to any chance McCarthy or Kennedy had for resting the nomination from the entrenched Humphrey.  

Ask the people who were involved that election to describe the atmosphere. Ask Bob Filner. The Congressman from the 50th District, who has spent a lifetime in politics and was jailed for two months in a Mississippi state prison for being a Freedom Rider, still gets quiet when the subject of Robert Kennedy comes up.

"There was something about him that was very different," said Filner to a meeting of the San Diego State University New Democrats during his 1987 run for the City Council. "You really had the feeling that Bobby could change things. There was a sense that the world could be better - less violent, more caring."  

The shock for those at the time was nightmarish. It was fate and tragedy in their purest meaning. Only five years since the murder of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, the great worry of that political year was the question: Would someone try to kill Bobby?  He seemed to have made it through. By the night of the election, it looked like he'd survived. Maybe, we thought, for one brief moment the world had backed away from the violent insanity which had taken JFK's life. That had stolen the life of Martin Luther King just three months earlier.

Just as today, people in San Diego gathered downtown at election central to party and watch the returns. The San Diego Union reported that the jubilation of the crowds was "evaporated within the blink of an eye as first words of the shooting of Sen. Robert Kennedy filtered into election central headquarters in the El Cortez Hotel."  

First news of the tragedy had Kennedy shot only in the hip, which produced a huge sigh of relief, according to reports that night. But when the news came over that the Senator from New York had been shot in the head and had been given the last rights, the agony of the incident rushed back like the misery of slow torture.  

"I'm ashamed! This country is all screwed up!" said a young Kennedy supporter as he dropped to his knees in tears, according to the Union. San Diego City Councilman Jack Walsh was holding a victory party for his own re-election when the news reached him. The party was frozen in horror as the details of the assassination were revealed. San Diego City Attorney Ed Butler stated to the Union that "if ever an event demonstrated the need to control promiscuous use of firearms, this is it. I just can't believe it - another Kennedy."  

And as awful as the murder of RFK was, rather than being the climactic violent event of that year, it simply accented the nature of the times. During that week alone there were bloody anti-capitalist student riots in France and Italy over the policies of French President Charles De Gaulle. There were anti-communist riots in Belgrade, Yugoslavia over conditions in the Universities. Massive pro-democracy rallies occurred in Prague, only to be crushed later that Summer when Soviet tanks rolled into the tiny nation, crushing what had been called "the Prague Spring."

In August, the Democratic Party imploded. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's attempts to maintain order, and control the anti-war protesters outside the halls of the Democratic Convention, produced so much violence, that later it was described as a "police riot." Police started beating with their billyclubs anyone who participated in the protests...or looked like a hippie.

The level of hatred spewing forth from both sides was greater than at any time since Americans fought each other during the Civil War. In many ways it was the second Civil War.  

At home, there were protests at San Diego State over the war. A group headed by folksinger Joan Baez called "The Palo Alto Resistance" came down to San Diego and organized rallies against the war. Threats were made against the life of Dr. Herbert Marcuse, a world renown professor at UCSD. He was called the leader of the "New Left" and the threats were so serious he fled the county with his family.

The capture of the USS Pueblo and the subsequent torture of Captain Lloyd Bucher and his crew at the hands of the North Koreans drew the biggest outcry from the people of San Diego. In this Navy community, rallies in San Diego numbered in the thousands, as the wife of Captain Bucher and others demanded that the U.S. Government secure the release of the kidnapped crew. El Cajon's own Marcee Retwis, at the time a fourteen year old student from Granite Hills High School, helped to organize rallies for the Pueblo. She was awarded a commendation by the California State Assembly for her efforts.  

"I hope to make it so that when somebody shows a little patriotism it will be an everyday thing and they won't receive an award," said Marcee Retwis in accepting the commendation.  

President Lyndon Johnson said in his 1971 autobiography The Vantage Point that the capture of the USS Pueblo "formed the first link in a chain of events - of crises, tragedy and disappointment - that added up to one of the most agonizing years any President has ever spent in the White House."  "...eleven miserable months went by before the men of the Pueblo were given their freedom. Every day that passed during those eleven months, the plight of those men obsessed and haunted me," said President Johnson.  

The violence and sadness of those first few days of Summer thirty years ago, affected the people of East County as surely as they affected people all over the world. But like so many small towns and counties across the land, people here coped with the times by simply trying to maintain a sense of normalcy.

There were no riots or protests on the streets - Wells Park in El Cajon was not overrun by hippies, like Griffith Park was in the then tiny town of Burbank. Men still wore their hair short and women wore dresses and skirts. But change did happen. In fact quite a lot of change took place in this county during that Summer.  

El Cajon elected James Snapp it's first Mayor by direct vote of the people that year. Prior to that, the City Council had chosen the Mayor. At El Cajon Valley High School, the kids were asked to choose who they would vote for president if they could. Richard Nixon edged Hubert Humphrey - foreshadowing the eventual election results. Young men were preparing to be drafted, prompting Art Grupe, the Editorials editor of The Smoke Signal, the schools newspaper, to question the fairness of the voting-age requirement, which was then twenty-one.

"The selective Service System engages in exploitation, since 18 year old men are told they can not vote, but the can go and kill or be killed in Vietnam," said Grupe.

El Cajon held a ribbon cutting ceremony as the extension of California Highway 8 was developed through the town. The city was moving forward, getting used to the brand new shopping center known as Parkway Plaza, that had just replaced acres of farm land only a couple of years earlier.

In La Mesa, the big issue at the start of the Summer of 1968 was whether sex education should be taught in the public schools the following Fall. The La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board was preparing to introduce a sex education program into the elementary schools.

Said board Chairman Hardy Kuykendall: "even though sometimes we laugh and jest about miniskirts and long haircuts, this is a serious and important subject and involves moral teaching. It does belong in the home to educate these kids but, unfortunately, it is not being done, so we must do it."

This statement produced an opposition editorial from the local paper at the time, The La Mesa Scout, which bordered on the hysterical:

"Do kiddies of the primary grades need to know about masturbation? Do the older ones need to know about deviations possible from the normal sex act of copulation?"

Ultimately, of course, the issue was resolved. 6th grade sex education has now become a right of passage.  

One of the biggest stories of that year was the Padres. That May they were named as one of two new expansion teams for the 1969 season, along with the Montreal Expos. Major League Baseball would now be a part of San Diego, demonstrating our real ascendency to big town status, as well as providing a use for the newly built San Diego Stadium during the Spring and Summer.

One other thing of note happened that June. Among other individuals re-elected in the county of San Diego that year, was an obscure former Marine to the State Assembly in the 76th district. His name was Pete Wilson.  

A 1987 almanac entitled History of El Cajon: Valley of Opportunity, concludes its chapter on the 1960's by saying "The Sixties ended on a note of expectation. Locally, business was good, jobs were plentiful, and building was on the upswing."  

It is an amazing statement considering the turbulence of that decade. Thirty years ago this Summer, the world shook with the anguish and disruption that assassination, civil unrest and war delivered. America suffered through a long hot Summer that made us question our basic sense of self. Only the successful December orbit of Apollo Ten around the Moon, saved America from witnessing the complete breakdown of our self-image...an image which just a bare seven years earlier had proudly been described as "The New Frontier."  

The United States survived the Summer of 1968. Perhaps we came through it precisely because small American towns like El Cajon, Lemon Grove, La Mesa and others of East County refused to participate in the turmoil. We refused to allow the insanity of the world to poison the peace and quiet of our communities.  

Were we sticking our heads in the sand? Did we simply try to hide from the violence that consumed other areas? Maybe.  But more than likely, the people of East County simply continued to believe in the inherent strength and perseverance of the nation. We refused to give up the hope that by working hard and having faith in the basic goodness of the country, our troubles would eventually work themselves out.  

In the final speech of his life, moments before he was killed, Robert Kennedy - basking in the glow of victory as he had won the California primary - said the following:  

"I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of the last three years - the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or over the war in Vietnam - that we can start to work together again. We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that the basis for running over the period of the next few months...".  

It was a statement of hope. It was a statement of patriotism in the best sense of the word - in the best tradition of America. Ultimately it was a message that accurately described the way El Cajon, La Mesa and other small towns across America tried to live their lives, during the hell of those times.