1962 Brought with it a new Worlds Fair  the fair featured imagining the 21st century and included such things as plankton farms and the Pontiac Firebird of the future (see picture below) among other things.

It was a year were Jackie Kennedy show her abilities as First Lady with a trip to India.

And we showed ourselves as being a space power when we put a man, John Glen who would return to space many years later, into orbit for the first time.  He was followed shortly there-after by Scott Carpenter.

I’ll soon be with you my love,
To give you my dawn surprise

But what I remember of  ’62 is the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Now since we’d supported an invasion of Cuba, the Russians who had been playing for a hand that close to our shores (hey man we were in Europe in multiple bases since the war) and Cuba had gone from insisting they weren’t Communist to being much bolder and welcoming their Russian comrades with open arms and available missile space—while the K’s (Kennedy and Khrushchev) played good guy and bad,   Interestingly enough the Pope had excommunicated Fidel Castro early this same year.

By October of the year we were in a major confrontation between the two when on Oct. 22 the president went on National TV to announce the facts–that the Russians were putting a missile base in Cuba and a base where their plane were only 90 miles from the US (as in Miami).  It was Thanksgiving time and we were not feeling like we had much to be thankful for as the US Navy formed a blockade to keep Soviet ships from delivering their deadly cargo.

I can remember the growing tension as the ships came closer, it was all everyone was talking about and as the ships approached the tension got worse…I also remember when the first ship reversed its course on 10/24 and my relief at the announcement of the event….its was a scary time setting at the brink of a war of two countries with atomic weapons.  And to everyone’s further relief by the end of the month Kennedy had announced the US would not invade Cuba again and  Khrushchev had the missiles already up taken down and stopped their build-up in the Caribbean and while we were relieved we were far from assured.

I’ll be with you darling soon,
I’ll be with you when the stars start falling

Wilt Chamberlin had come into his own  and Jackie Robinson became the first African American to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Meanwhile Mickey Mantle hit his 375th career home run and Porsche developed the 804 Formula 1 Racing car.   In the more gentile sport of golf Arnold Palmer won the Masters and to be honest, he was one of the few golf stars I would even have recognized the name of in this time and era.  Oh and a Russian newspaper took credit for the Communist country’s  invention of baseball “a very old” Russian game!

Stevie (who was still “Little” then) Wonder released his 2nd album, which was Uncle Ray a tribute to another blind musician Ray Charles and the Beatles were doing addition records in a not yet swinging England, resulting by late in the year their first recording Love Me Do being released.  The Twist was born, a dance I could do–being young and skinner had it’s plus points—and the same church that expelled Castro declared it evil and outlawed it in their schools…but 17,000 fans attended his dance party and got the bragging rights for the first BIG rock concert in the San Fran Bay Area and the Isley Brokers also twisted to a hit with Twist and Shout.  And this was the year the Beach Boy’s music first took us to the California surfing scene, if only in our minds for most of us.  And in far away Europe the Rolling Stones preformed under that name for the first time.   Peter, Paul and Mary released their first hit:  If I Had a Hammer.

A Clock Work Orange, which would go on to be a shatteringly violent movie made its first appearance as a book as did One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which gave us the worse nurse ever and would help to make Jack Nicholas even more infamous in later days.  Then there was Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Girly Brown..OH MY…  The top movie of the year according to the Academy was West Side Story, a musical which did not get best song–that went to Moon River…and the two top actors were European (Sophia Loren/Two Women & Maximillian Schell/Judgment at Nuremburg).   In May she sang Happy Birthday to the President and by August  we had lost Marilyn Monroe but to suicide, accidental overdose or a Kennedy necessity depending on the TV show or book you view now.  But in 1962 we didn’t have the everything is a plot mentality soooo we just knew it was the drugs.  And Ernie Kovacs (whose motto:  “Nothing in moderation”  might well have served for the generation that was quickly coming into the lime light) died in a car crash.  Johnny Carson started a 30 year run on the Tonight show and Walter Cronkite, often felt to be the most trusted news man that ever set an anchor position, began his long reign as on CBS.  Oh and I can’t the play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum debuted –though I would have to wait for the movie .  Meanwhile Andy Warhol opened his first solo show.   While the Jetsons and the Beverly Hillbillies  premiered on the small screen and Lawrence of Arabia on the big one.

I’ve been waiting so long
To be where I’m going

The environment began to come forward as an issue  with the advent of a book about pesticides and what they were doing to our planet—it got several of us teen’s attention.

The Black movement continue to gather ground but not without blood shed and violence.  James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi on 9/20….by 10/1 he was enrolled as a transfer student, during that 10 days of time from starting to enrollment, his enrollment was blocked by the governor, the president became involved and when negotiations didn’t work, Federal Marshals were sent in—the resulting riots killed 2 students and injured 160 marshals in the less two week period.   There were other actions such as the Bus Boycott in Macon, Georgia.  The Phillie’s baseball club moved from one hotel in Clearwater Florida to another outside the  city when the first one refused to house black players.  There were destroyed churches and violence and Martin Luther King was involved in many demonstrations resulting in multiple arrests.

June of 1962 saw the first SDS (Students for A Democratic Society) held convention….though much note was not made of them then they would go on to become the poster child for the radical side of the youth movement for change and peace in the 60’s .  They had earlier in the year (Feb.) been part of a Harvard activist’s (Todd Gitlin)  national anti-war rally in Washington, DC. attended by 8.000 students and during which the SDS organized the first anti-nuclear march.

In the sunshine of your love

1962 marked the beginning of the use of Agent Orange, a code name for a herbicide/defoliant, by the US military in Vietnam.  The chemical was sprayed to reduce and remove jungle foliage to reduce Viet Cong hiding places as well as destroy North Vietnam crops later in the war.   To this day I am not sure that we know—and if we do they’re not telling the majority of the rest of us—-how many were injured by this chemical agent–both on their and our sides.    Also in Vietnam—as of  March of ’62 the US advisors went from advisory to combatant activities –the same month saw the Russians requesting our departure from  the country.    In May US troops were sent to Thailand and Marines to Laos.

1962 marked the beginning of the end for Alcatraz Maximum security prison housed on an island in a harbor and Adolph Eichmann,   Gestapo official and Nazi war criminal, was hanged near Tel Aviv, Israel, for his role in the Nazi murder of over one million Jews.

And this was the year that the supreme court outlawed prayer in public schools as unconstitutional.

I’m with you my love,
The light’s shining through on you

Yes, I’m with you my love,
It’s the morning and just we two