Through the Decades - 1960's
©
Jim Cordell
The sixties were the age of youth, as 70 million children from the post-war baby boom became teenagers and young adults. The movement away from the conservative fifties (as Bob and Eddie just portrayed) continued and eventually resulted in revolutionary ways of thinking and real change in the cultural fabric of American life. No longer content to be images of the generation ahead of us, we wanted change. These changes affected education, values, lifestyles, laws, and entertainment. Many of the revolutionary ideas which began in the sixties are continuing to evolve today.
To illustrate this point, let me remind you of some of the “hot button” issues that come out of the sixties and are still with us today –
Civil Rights
Abortion
Status of Women
“Glass Ceiling’
LSD and Marijuana
Prayer in Public Schools
Anti-War Protests
Environmental Movement
In the brief few minutes that I have, I want to paint “word pictures” of how these cultural trends played out in my life as a student on the campus of Georgetown College in the sixties.
Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I was the third youngest in a family seven children. My three older brothers and one sister chose not to go to college after high school. So the pressure was on me and my younger twin brothers to be the first college graduates in our family. The Cordell’s were Baptist to the bone. My parents were leaders in the church and our entire family life rotated around our participation in the local Baptist church. Since the Ohio Baptist Convention did not sponsor any Baptist Colleges, most good Baptist Buckeyes attended one of the three Baptist Liberal Arts Colleges in Kentucky.
During my senior year in high school, David Hampton, was the part-time Minister of Music at my home church, He was a Georgetown College student and was instrumental in making arrangements for me to audition for a music scholarship at Georgetown College. The rest of the story is history.
My initial concept of attending Georgetown College was that it would be a continuation of my perfect isolated and insulated Baptist cocoon that I experienced as a child and teenager. I invite you to journey back with me to those impressionable and unforgettable years as a student at Georgetown College.
I learned that college is basically a bunch of rooms where you sit for roughly two thousand hours and to memorize things. The two thousand hours are spread out over four years; you spend the rest of the time sleeping and trying to get dates. That is unless you are a pre-ministerial or music education major, as that will take at least nine semesters to complete.
Basically I learned two kinds of things in college:
Things I needed to know in later life (two hours). These include how to make collect phone calls and to get soda pop and crepe-paper out of your pajamas.
Things I did not need to know in later life (1,998 hours). These are things you learn in classes whose names end in –ology, -osophy, -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay in college for the rest of your life.
It’s very difficult to forget everything. For example, when I was in college, I had to memorize – don’t ask me why – the names of three other metaphysical poets other than John Donne. I have managed to forget one of them, but I still remember that the other two were named Vaughan and Crashaw. Sometimes, when I’m trying to remember something important like whether my wife told me to get tuna packed in oil or tuna packed in water, Vaughan and Crashaw just pop up in my mind, right there in the supermarket. It’s a terrible waste of brain cells.
An estimated 850,000 “war baby” freshmen entered college in the sixties. Georgetown College had to deal with the increases student population by placing students temporary in houses purchased in the community until additional dorms could be built. Under the able leadership of Dr. Robert Mills, the college’s third lay president, the college had to adjust to the challenges of the sixties as college campuses became centers of debate and scenes of protest more than ever before. Great numbers of young adults, baby boomers, reaching military draft age and not yet voting age (minimum voting age did not become 18 until 1971). caused a struggle which played out on many campuses as the county became more involved in the Vietnam War. In many ways, we were insulated from these struggles at Georgetown being a small family-oriented Baptist campus. We were, for the most part, a homogenous community.
Let me share with you some of the things I wish I had known before I came to college…
That it didn’t matter how late I scheduled my first class, I’d sleep right through it.
That I could change so much and barely realize it.
That you can love a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
That college kids throw airplanes too.
That if you wear polyester everyone will ask you why you’re so dressed up,
That every clock on campus shows a different time.
That if you were smart in high school – so what?
That you can know everything and fail a test.
That you can know nothing and ace a test.
That I could get used to almost anything I found out about my roommate.
That home is a great place to visit.
That most of my education would be obtained outside of my classes.
That I would be one of those people my parents warned me about.
That my parents would become so much smarter during my college years.
That it’s possible to be alone even when you are surrounded by friends.
That friends are what makes this place worthwhile.
That I would meet and marry the love of my life.
That God would allow me to participate in His kingdom’s work.