Family stories have a life of their own in that things long forgotten can suddenly reappear.
Take my late English mother-in-law’s expression, “It will all be the same in a hundred years.” Surviving two world wars earned Evelyn a historical perspective on life. She remembered 1918 when English women with some property finally earned the right to vote. America would wait until 1920 before granting women suffrage.
To history buffs, a must-read column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette is A Look back, which this year reprises 1968.
Here’s my personal version.
As our dad aged, he grew to hate seeing his name among the movers and shakers of a Northampton yesterday. Commonly, people I know, or knew, appear in bygone news. I’ve likely made it myself.
If so, it would have been from the 1970s when I spent five years on Northampton’s Redevelopment Authority. Our NRA committee worked on the city’s first Industrial Park and a 1974 downtown study during the Sean Dunphy administration. Our Hamp tax-relief efforts took decades to come to fruition. Old Yiddish saying: “Men plan, and God laughs.”
Item: Fifty years ago City Councilor Edward A. McColgan announced his candidacy for state representative in the 1st Hampshire District.
In 1956, Maureen and I moved to 4B Hampshire Heights next door to Ed and Mary McColgan. We’d been married for a year, had a brand new son and were moving up. We’d won a larger apartment for our new family, and were happy to give up our third-floor flat on Crescent Street.
The Heights was loaded with veterans whose families grew year by year. Homebody whisperers deciphered the mystery: “It’s in the pipes.”
That being the case, by 1968 the expanded McColgan and Cahillane clans had relocated to Ward 4. As ambitious young marrieds and lifelong Democrats we were inspired by and then devastated by the loss of our Irish heritage hero, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Ed turned his anger into action by running and winning his race to be Ward 4 City Councilor. Change was in the air. Northampton was shaking off its torpid past and, as JFK promised, moving again.
At that point our paths diverged. Ed was doing his education thing by teaching at Westfield State. I was wrapped up in the family car business.
American Motors was five years behind the hot-selling Ford Mustang when it introduced its stylish 1968 Javelin sports coupe. For us, it was a minor miracle when we took orders for twenty-five Javelins the first day it went on sale at $2,400 retail. Those were memorable days, beginning with January’s boiler explosion and fire that destroyed our showroom.
I long envisioned a larger display area. Now 13 years out of the Air Force, and turning 35, I was frustrated with the pace of change. In many ways 1968 became a watershed.
Our dad’s architect friend Frank Mahoney designed a new showroom. We bought property next door to enlarge the sales lot. Across South Street, Maureen and I added a family room to our small house.
Sharing frustration at having few savings after more than a decade in an expanding family business, my three brothers and I decided to sign up for the National Automobile Dealers Association’s pension plan in 1968.
That turned out to be a good idea because salaries for our mechanics and auto-body workers competed with those of higher paid defense workers. The plan gave everyone a bonus and a stake in our company’s success. I had never felt right about our dad just shaking hands with a retiring “Westy,” his longtime gas station helper.
We matched 2 percent of employee contributions. Interest, inflation and time did the rest. Thirty years later, one long-serving technician was able to retire with $200,000.
The Vietnam War continued all year as losses mounted on both sides. February’s Tet Offensive killed 542 Americans in one week. The nation had wanted to believe military statements that we were winning. In February, trusted CBS TV anchor Walter Cronkite wrote a commentary in which he called on our government to negotiate an end to the war. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was quoted as saying, “If we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost middle America.”
Following Vatican II, St. Mary’s Catholic Church sponsored a small-group discussion program on faith. Our April 1968 meeting on Fort Street silently broke up on hearing awful news. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, and 1968 was far from over.
The night of MLK’s murder, presidential candidate, Sen. Robert Kennedy, prevented a riot in Indianapolis when he spoke movingly of an America in need of compassion and love. Kennedy’s assassination, following his win in June’s California Democratic primary, devastated his supporters. After living through President Kennedy’s killing, followed five years onward by MLK’s, TV’s Vietnamese body counts, civil rights and anti-war protests and now Bobby gone, overnight, dismayed us all.
Our early morning caller simply said, “Turn on the news.” Fifty years ago, no one could articulate America’s latest gun horror.
We accepted an invitation to attend Maureen’s brother’s wedding in August 1968. We’d not been to England since our marriage. After 13 years, it was time. Two of our boys, 12 or under, were eligible for half-fare tickets and took this opportunity to meet their English relatives.
Election year 1968 was hot. LBJ opted out back in March following New Hampshire voter disapproval.
In late August, the Democrats met in open convention in Chicago. Ten thousand anti-war demonstrators came to town. Tear gas clouds enveloped the innocent and the guilty as Mayor Richard Daley released his police on rioting crowds. TV took it to living rooms all over America, as former vice president Richard Nixon’s stock rose. Hubert Horatio Humphrey won the Democratic Party’s nod in a hollow victory, thanks to LBJ’s and Mayor Daley’s misdeeds.
As a local businessman, I tried to keep my head low in that summer of discontent, yet added my name to a last-ditch Gazette signature ad fostered by new Smith College friends and other local Democrats. HHH lost!
For us, the national election took second place to Ed McColgan’s bid for state representative in the 1st Hampshire District. Old friend Ed was running hard. Young Northampton attorney Sean Dunphy signed on as Ed’s campaign manager and we greenhorns were off to the races. Car toppers, fundraisers, brochures, radio spots and photo ops made for a frenetic pace.
Ed won his seat, but we never stopped because Dunphy ran for mayor in 1969, winning three terms. I believe my generation truly came of political age in one fateful year — 1968.
I remember it well.
This column was changed June 27 to correct the year that women were granted the right to vote in the United States.
Jim Cahillane, of Williamsburg, made new friends as a writer, ad man and foot soldier in political campaigns. He writes a monthly column and can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.