Thirty years on
On the evening of August 8, 1974, I raised a glass in toast to our Constitution, and to the system of government arising from it. The President of the United States had just announced that he would resign from office rather than continue to fight against his impending impeachment by the House of Representatives and the all-but-inevitable conviction by the Senate that would soon follow. Mr. Nixon would be replaced by the Vice President, but not the man who had been his 1972 running mate. Spiro T. Agnew, facing bribery and tax evasion charges arising from his term as governor of Maryland, had resigned that post 10 months earlier. Instead, as provided under the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the Vice President was Gerald Ford, former Speaker of the House, who had recently been appointed by Nixon and confirmed by Congress.
The Constitutional crisis, brought on by the Watergate break-in; the subsequent cover-up; the investigative journalism of Woodward, Bernstein, and a host of lesser-known reporters; the investigation by a Select Committee of the Senate; and the rulings by federal courts from District up to Supreme was resolved with decorum and with integrity. The “system” worked.
I was nearly 24 at the time, working as a summer intern in the New York State Health Department. I was on assignment as field supervisor of a KAP (knowledge/attitudes/practice) survey of reproductive health underway in 18 counties in the east-central part of the state—basically, surrounding Albany and down into the Catskills. I don’t remember exactly which little, out-of-the-way town I was in, though it was probably in either Delaware or Schoharie County. I raised that glass, in relief and pride of country, with my supervisor George Stroh. In the three decades since, he’s gone on to manage a variety of public health programs for the CDC and the WHO. I didn’t really keep in touch with George after that summer, and the Google search I used to locate information about him didn’t reveal George’s current whereabouts. It’s quite likely that he’s retired by now, as he was probably close to 40 on that evening of glass-raising thirty years ago.
Approximately a week later, I visited Max Yasgur’s farm. It was five years to the day after 450,000 of us celebrated those wondrous Three Days of Peace and Music. I recall that it took me a little while to get my bearings sufficiently to find the place ... I was now driving along roads I’d previously walked. There was no sign that anything momentous had ever happened on those grounds, just a big empty field. Nostalgia-seekers wouldn’t start descending on the site for another 15 or more years. On August 15, 1974, then, I walked into the middle of the Woodstock site and sat down, with absolutely no one else in sight. Nothing to disturb my recollections except the whisper of a breeze through waving grasses and the buzzing of insects. I drank in the quietude for a few reflective minutes, envisioning the vibe of five years earlier, and took my leave of that hallowed ground.
Comments
Did you think to hum Richie Havens’ Freedom? It would have been appropriate.
I was in the Navy in Japan at the time, getting all my news from Stars and Stripes. I don’t remember, but I suspect it had a 20-pt headline on August 9 or 10.
Interesting you should mention Havens. We were driving in from Hartford, thereby avoiding the huge traffic jams, but didn’t quite know where we were heading along the backroads of upstate New York. We eventually pulled to the side of the road and set up our tents, then started walking with the crowds ... hoping someone knew where we were all going.
Eventually, after passing the famous skinny-dipping pond, and being greeted by numerous bemused locals offering water from their garden hoses, we found the site.
We stepped carefully over the knocked-down fencing, observing that there was no one around to collect our tickets (yes, we’d bought some ... my brother still has them).
At that very instant, as if he’d somehow been waiting for us to arrive, the opening chords of Richie’s first song rang across the field!
Hmmm, maybe I need to write a longer piece about Woodstock…
Now that would be interesting. A New York City resident was in the frat-house room next to mine a year or so later; he’d been to Woodstock, and he had stories I often doubted (Andy’s father Martin was a writer about the occult [also a biographer of Lin Piao or someone like that, I think], and I sometimes thought the storytelling gene was getting the better of him).
Such kinder days they seem now, despite the turmoil of then. If another Woodstock were to arise, I fear we’d all be imprisoned incommunicado.
Kevin, they’d just have erected the chain-link fence and razor wire around Yasgur’s farm immediately. ;)
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