Summer of '69: A nation at war
By the summer of 1969, America's role in the war in Vietnam was more than a decade old. Before American involvement ended in 1973, the war would touch nearly every Long Island community, from the western suburbs to farming and fishing towns on the East End.
Today, the legacy of that war resonates deeply for many Long Islanders, from individuals who proudly wear their uniforms at parades to others who continue to live with the physical consequences of their participation in a far-off war fought, in large part, by conscripts, and to still others who recall their days protesting the war and burning draft cards.
The Vietnam War is part of the curriculum in Long Island's schools, and rightfully so. In the classroom, students can learn that the war's toll reached into the region's communities with chilling regularity, and they can read the names of the 574 Long Islanders who died.
1969 - a year after the Tet Offensive, when support for the war in the United States began to wane - was a tough year for the region's soldiers and their families. Between January and June, five soldiers from Central Islip were killed. Five more came from Huntington and Huntington Station. Death claimed Copiague's Dennis Murphy on June 18 and Copiague's Daniel O'Connell the next day. The region's newspapers regularly printed soldiers' obituaries.
In January, two soldiers from Bay Shore were killed. February was a particularly tough month: Two Long Islanders were killed on the 17th, two more on the 18th, two more on the 22nd, two more on the 23rd. By year's end, there were four deaths of soldiers from Massapequa, two from East Meadow, two from Elmont, four from Uniondale and three from Valley Stream.
For males between 18 and 35, the specter of being drafted loomed large that summer, as John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" vied for the public's ear with Frank Sinatra's "My Way," and as hundreds of thousands prepared to travel to Woodstock for what would be a historic music festival heavily tinged with anti-war sentiment.
"I used to love Sundays because you didn't get mail. Then, one day my mother called me, and I knew that was it," said Bruce Mischler, 61, of Riverhead, who was drafted in 1968. "I knew it was coming because so many of my friends were over there. I had two friends who had been killed and another who was at St. Albans," which was a naval hospital in Queens.
Controversy over the Vietnam War raged in every corner of Long Island during that fateful summer of '69 - across dinner tables, in high school classrooms, among church congregations, at campus demonstrations.
"It was a crazy summer of contradictions between a conservative society and its radicalizing youth," said Arthur Lothstein, 67, of Huntington, who teaches the philosophy of dissent at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, and who was on the faculty in 1969. "How could the Motion Picture Academy have voted 'Oliver' as the best movie, or 'Little Green Apples' win the Grammy at a time when a half-million people are flocking to Woodstock to hear 'One, two, three, what are we fighting for?' "
Long Island was a natural incubator of support for the war. Its suburban character had been largely defined by soldiers returning from World War II, who, helped by the GI Bill, bought their first homes in suburbs built atop old potato farms and raised their families. A generation later, the conservatism of many of those returning veterans - who had helped defeat the Nazis and end the Holocaust - ran headlong into the anti-war radicalism of their own children.
And economically, the defense industry, led by Grumman, Republic and Sperry, supplied good-paying jobs for thousands of skilled workers, who in turn were able to afford their own homes in the region's expanding suburbs.
When all is said and done, the story of any war is the story of those who participated.
"I was drafted, and I did my duty and did it well. . . . I'm not for war, but I would not run away from it. Sometimes, it's necessary for democracy, for the safety of our own country. I feel I fought for the right reasons."
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