Lessons from 1968 still ring true at 40

By Ben Hillyer (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Friday, July 11, 2008

Two shots rang out in the darkness in 1968.

Two men lay slain – one in Memphis the other in California — but not before they changed the American landscape forever.

That was 40 years ago, a time that I can only witness through the grainy images of black and white photographs or the flickering of news reels. I was not born yet, in this year that changed history forever.

Or so I read on the front of a news magazine while standing at the checkout in the grocery store the other day.

It was considered one of the most pivotal 12 month periods in American history. That single year was the climax for many of the social, political and cultural movements that had been building up over the entire decade.

During the 60s, the United States became entrenched in an unpopular war, the Civil Rights movement gained momentum and social experimentation and psychedelic music became the rage.

These movements all reached their apex in 1968, exploding across 365 days with violence and mourning.

Like that year was to the country, July 10, 1968 was to the Hillyer family in Asheville, N.C. Born many weeks premature, I came into the turbulent world of 1968 as a tiny baby holding on to the thinnest threads of life.

By July 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Robert Kennedy’s life had already been snuffed out by an assassin in California. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam had already begun and a little known tyrant by the name of Saddam Hussein would be days away from taking control of Iraq through a coup d’etat.

Having heard the story of my birth many times from my parents, I have thought in recent days how the story of my birth and the story of the year in which I was born mirror each other.

I recently read a national column that remarked how humans “resonate” with the time in which we were born. Looking back on these past 40 years I can see how my life is forever connected to that explosive summer of 1968.

In doing a little research on that time, I was struck by how young both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were when they were assassinated.

Murdered a few months shy of his 40th birthday, King was transforming an entire nation as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He had become the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Having once served as the United States Attorney General, Robert Kennedy was 42 years old and seeking the presidency when he won the Democratic Primary in California on June 6, 1968. Hours later he died at the hands of an assassin in a California Hotel.

It is amazing to me how young these men were when they were killed and how much they had accomplished in their lives. Imagine what the futures might have held for King and Kennedy had they lived another 40 years.

For me, these are comforting thoughts, especially in light of my birthday morning when I mulled over all of the things left unfinished in my past 40 years.

Starting the first day of my fifth decade, I worried that the best years of life had already passed. Forty is after all a pivotal point in one’s life — the point at which one might feel balanced at the midpoint.

Thankfully, as my day continued and the birthday greetings piled up, I ran into many of my everyday acquaintances who remarked that nothing was farther from the truth.

From my mother to my barber to good friends from church, the consensus about life was pretty much the same. Of the many family and friends I spoke with, all agreed that they were experiencing the best years of their life today regardless of their ages. Such words are encouraging to a pessimist like me.

The history of 1968 tells me, though, that none of this is guaranteed me. It is a lesson that each day holds the promise to be a part of the best time of my life.

Ben Hillyer is web editor of The Natchez Democrat. He can reached at ben.hillyer@natchezdemocrat.com or at 601-445-3540.