THIS WAS
BEMIDJI 1968 D1 | Sunday, July 29, 2018 The Bemidji Pioneer
A PIVOTAL TIME OF
PASSION AND POSSIBILITY Fifty years. Half a century. A really long time to some; what seems like yesterday to others. The year was 1968, arguably one of the most pivotal years in U.S. history. It was a year that shaped the future of America — in both the positive and negative. A time when the idyllic facade of the post-World War II America of the 1950s and early 1960s was tested and, some would say, later shattered. As Marc Fisher of the Washington Post puts it so plainly: “1968 was the year the center did not hold. It was the year many Americans saw their country spinning out of control. It was a shocking time, a moment of danger, destruction and division — yet also a time of passion and possibil-
ity.” The sea change sweeping the nation, and the world, in 1968 did not leave Bemidji behind, either. Change was happening all around us here in Bemidji, yet, to a degree, the First City on the Mississippi was still a quiet northern Minnesota town. “It cost 15 cents to ride the city bus. We’d get on in downtown Bemidji, pay 15 cents, then ride around town. No parental supervision. There was no fear of getting kidnapped, or anything like that,” writes Jim Aakhus, now 60, about that summer of 1968 when he was between the fifth and sixth grades. But indeed, the times they were a changing, as Bob Dylan sang in 1964, and so was the country.
Fisher continues: “The polarization that plagues the nation half a century later was born, in many ways, in 1968. Two of the nation’s most cherished leaders, a King and a Kennedy, were assassinated. Americans watched terrible things happen on television — shattered shop windows and burning buildings after the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the heaving grief of mourners alongside railroad tracks as Robert F. Kennedy’s casket passed by. In downtowns where people once came together, looters stole groceries and liquor and TV sets and, for many Americans, their sense of security. “But 1968 was also a shining moment, a year packed with the progress that made today better
than yesterday. “Human beings for the first time saw what our planet looks like from space. The Defense Department granted a contract to a company to build the first router, a key step toward connecting computers in different locations. “A white man kissed a black woman on national television for the first time. They were in outer space, and they lived in the future, and they were fictional characters, Capt. Kirk and Lt. Uhura, but they were also on NBC, in millions of homes, in 1968. “Above all, the year divided Americans from one another, to the point that many believed the country was on the verge of chaos. Every day
brought new confrontations — students against administrators, blacks against whites, workers against bosses. It was a cacophony of demonstrations, picket lines, radical manifestos, underground publications, sit-ins, beins, Yip-ins.” Against much of this backdrop was the war in Vietnam; 1968 was year of the famous Tet Offensive and would become the bloodiest year of the conflict — 16,899 Americans perished — an average of 46 a day, the Washington Post reported. The war was felt here at home, too, as three young men from Bemidji — Thomas Charles Lewer, 20; Richard Dewey Vick, 22; and Robert Wayne Glidden, 19 — were killed in Vietnam in 1968. One who did come home was Al Curb: “I do remember loading the plane up when we were leaving,” Curb told the Pioneer. “We were in a big file, 225 of us, and we had to wait until all these young men got off
the plane. Now we’re all tanned and leathered and wrinkled, beat up. And all these young kids get off that plane. . . and they’re laughing and joking as they’re walking by us. I know they stared at us like ‘What is wrong with these guys?’ All I could think about, and I never forgot it, is that half of you are not coming back. And they didn’t know that yet.” But like many U.S. communities in 1968, life continued in Bemidji. Downtown was the core of the city, with Paul and Babe standing tall as they do still. There were the famous amusement park rides near the statues; and who can forget Herb’s popcorn stand? You could get everything downtown — heck, there were five hardware stores — and the fancy Markham Hotel would be the place to stay in Bemidji. Or you could head out to Midway Drive to find a motor hotel where the Hampton Inn and Dou-
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