Author Michael Medved is one of my favorite conservative radio talk show hosts and political pundits, a purveyor of Intelligent and witty banter and caustic humor. He is sanguine and articulate in stating his opinion but, on the radio, respectfully listens to his guests’ comments and opinions, and graciously defends his position on various topics ranging from religion to politics to marriage and psychology. I had been a fan for years when I discovered “What Really Happened to the Class if ‘65.”
I, too, graduated with the class of ‘65, not from privileged Pacific Palisades HS in affluent Southern CA, but from a small redneck-rough town on the rugged coast of Northern CA, fishing and lumber village Fort Bragg and FB Union HS. Seeing the cover on a bookshelf in my favorite bookstore, the title piqued my interest. I had remembered perusing the 1975 Time magazine article, the inspiration for the 1976 book of the same name, whereby the Palisade students were profiled. I was intrigued to read about me and my generation, albeit somewhat more financially privileged. By contrast, I also remembered an earlier (1969?) magazine article profiling Fort Bragg/Mendocino County as the patently illegal “marijuana capitol” of the world, the renowned Emerald Triangle of lawlessness entrepreneurship, my hometown rampant with guns, drugs and questionable characters.
I was interested in Medved’s story, to see “how the other side lives.” I was intrigued by the concept of “whatever happened to . . .” I had missed my own class reunions up through year twenty, due to other commitments,e.g., Vietnam, a military career and world assignments. So this question frequently popped into my mind. Whatever happened to . . . Don and Steve and Carol and Mary? Whatever happened to the Class President, the Homecoming Queen, the jock and the head cheerleader? The hit girl down the block, the class clown? Little did I realize — there’s a book there.
Time magazine described these youngsters as “on the verge of the Golden Era.” Ten years later they had gone through the sexual revolution, civil rights and civil disobedience, the women’s movement, Vietnam, race riots in Watts and Detroit, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Nixon and Watergate. Oh, and don’t forget — drugs with a capital ‘D.’ A decade of unrest and upheaval. Medved and his co-author, David Wallechinsky, profiled many of their more prominent classmates. They named names, peeled back painful layers of consciousness, spilled blood and exposed veins. . There were lots of examples of wasted opportunity, squandered potential, pain and sadness, only a few moments of spontaneity and joy. As Julia mentioned in her review of the book, “The golden era was not so golden.”
I found myself being able to relate to more than just a few of Medved’s classmates, finding things common to me, events and experiences common to some of my own friends. I was able to make it to my 25 year reunion, to my 50 year reunion, as well as several reunions in between. The book inspired me to reach out and reconnect, not only with high school classmates, but many friends and acquaintances from college and my many years in the Army.
I’ve read with pleasure and intrigue other books of this genre, these coming-of-age, entering adulthood memoir-style treatments. Examples: “Goat Brothers,” the story of five frat brothers in the 1960s at U.C. Berkeley. “The Long Grey Line,” the story of the graduating class of 1966 at West Point Military Academy, the story of brand new butter bars who blindly and innocently were thrown into the jaws of the Vietnam War. “The Boys of ‘67,” the story of thousands of young men recruited and drafted from the cities and towns of America, fresh from the Saturday night cruise to the jungles of Vietnam.
I find these books to be most fascinating and somewhat voyeuristic, peeking in on the lives of these real-life characters. in the long run, I discovered there as not much difference Palisade HS versus FB Union HS. We all tread water and, ultimately, find our own path, either by determination or by circumstance, only for the few by birthright or birth place.