Wow! In 1969, where did we dream we’d be when half a century was gone?

*Yes, it’s been fifty years since “the sixties” reached their frantic climax… and how different the end of decade looked from January 2, 1960, when John F. Kennedy drew smirks by announcing that he was going to run for president!

*So what was going on in that memorable year?

*To get perhaps the ugliest memory out of the way, 1969 was the year of the Manson Family murders.

*It was also the year Ted Kennedy crashed his car at Chappaquidick, killing Mary Jo Kopechne.

*Richard Nixon became president that year, and soon ordered secret bombing of Cambodia. And it was the year of the Santa Barbara oil spill, one of the first of those dreadful accidents (still the thrid-worst in U.S. history), and perhaps the first to rally thousands to rescue the suffering wildlife.

*James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan confessed to the assassination murders they committed the previous year, of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, respectively.

*Hurricane Camille killed over 300 people, destroyed 30,000 homes in the U.S., and left 200,000 people homeless in the Caribbean. It’s still the third-most intense storm to strike the U.S.

*Golda Meir took office as prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Former president Eisenhower died, while his old wartime comrade Charles de Gaulle (a very prickly, difficult comrade, to be sure) resigned as president of France. Ho Chi Minh died, no doubt still disgusted by how Woodrow Wilson had gone back on his promises at the Versailles peace conference in 1919 – a betrayal that had set the stage for the Vietnam War.

*The Stonewall Riots took place in New York City, and gay people began to openly demand decent treatment, rather than discrimination, ridicule, and abuse.

*The Woodstock music festival took place! Noplace near Woodstock, though. The planned venue that had panicked and reneged at the last minute, under pressure from Nelson Rockefeller. Farmer Max Yasgur near Bethel didn’t give a hoot about Rocky, and local motel operator Elliot Tiber already had a permit for a fair and craft show, so…. The rest is history.

*Man on the moon! (To quote Walter Cronkite.) Neil Armstrong took “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” and earthlings had finally traveled from their planet to another world… and back again. Later in ’69 Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed as well. Those four are one-third of the people who have ever stepped in the moon.

*The Beatles performed their last concert, and issued the album “Abbey Road.” Led Zeppelin issued its FIRST album. Other debuts in 1969 included “The Godfather,” (the book), “Scooby Doo,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “Sesame Street,” Wal-Mart, and Wendy’s.

*Besides getting our first look at Big Bird that year, and being introduced to Vito Corleone, we sweated out the first draft lottery, and gingerly operated the first ATM. ARPANET, forerunner to the Internet, went into operation.

*Births for the year included Jennifer Aniston, Cory Booker, Steffi Graf, Ice Cube, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Gwen Stefani, and Nancy Kerrigan.

*Deaths included former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles; actor Boris Karloff, famed for portraying Frankenstein’s monster; cowboy comic Gabby Hayes; Franz von Papen, who maneuvered Hitler into power and then had 36 years to regret it; and beat poet Jack Kerouac.

*All in all, it was a memorable year. And half of a century has passed since then.