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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue the oral history call-in series we're doing on the most defining news events of your lifetime. Maybe if you're Brazilian, it was yesterday. We're taking this decade by decade. We started last week with callers in your 90s, 80s, and 70s. Today, if you are in your 60s, this call-in will only be for you today on the most defining news event of your lifetime, local, national, or global. For some extra fun, we'll invite you to name the most memorable concert you ever saw if you have one.

People so far have cited things like seeing Duke Ellington's orchestra in Paris and Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden, and the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder on the same bill. How about for you if you're in your 60s? 212-433-WNYC. For those of you for whom this is a new concept, if you didn't hear any of the segments in the series last week, again, it's the oral history call-in series that we're doing on the most defining news event of your lifetime.

We're taking this decade by decade, and today, if you are in your 60s, this call-in is only for you today on the most defining news event of your lifetime, local, national, or global, as we try to use the privilege, and it is a privilege, of having this live show and all our amazing callers to build a kind of almost century-long oral history narrative of the big events of any of our lifetimes sequentially as we move up through your decades of birth.

Callers in your 90s cited Pearl Harbor the most as a defining news event. Callers in your 80s cited the JFK assassination more than anything. Obviously, lots of different things for everybody, but these are the ones that came up the most. Callers in your 70s mentioned the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, among other turning point events. Let's see as your calls are coming in, if you're turning 60 this year, you were born in 1963 and you're one of the last baby boomers. They tend to say the post-war baby boom generation started in 1946 and ended in people born 1964. You also might identify more with Generation X sensibilities if you're in your very early 60s right now.

You weren't aware of the Kennedy assassination or the hippie period or political tumult of the late 60s. Really, if you were born in 1963, you were too young. Maybe you remember Martin Luther King being killed or the Democratic Convention of 1968, but maybe not. You were only five. Remembering the King assassination might be very different by race. If you were a five-year-old white kid, your parents were probably horrified but didn't make it a big topic of family conversation perhaps. Maybe if you were a Black five-year-old, your parents did, and it was more personal and more formative. Everyone's experience is different. Those are a few thoughts.

If you're in your late 60s today, born maybe in 1954, 1955, you remember more of the 1960s. What was the biggest news event of your lifetime that was formative to you? I'll also say if you're exactly 60, born in the year of the Kennedy assassination, you grew up in the environment of the Cold War still and the progressive environmental and feminist movements plus Watergate, and losing the Vietnam War. That would have been when you were just 12 if you were born in 1963 and you're 60, turning 60 this year. The Beatles had broken up by the time you started really listening to music. Probably if you're 60 now, rap and hip hop started coming in when you were teenagers, and you were in your teens and 20s for the rise of the Reagan and evangelical right, backlash to civil rights, stagnation in racial equality. The Iran hostage crisis and weird inauguration day for Ronald Reagan around that with a simultaneous release of the hostages as he was being sworn in.

If you're in your 60s, anywhere in your 60s, you were still in your 20s or early 30s when the Berlin Wall fell into the Cold War, which was of course a big bright line in defining eras in recent history, followed by the pretty weird Clinton and Giuliani and Gingrich '90s when a lot of seeds were planted for both Trump and the modern left. You were maybe 40-something when 911 happened and started the modern period in a certain respect. 15 years ago now, we had the financial crisis and the start of the Great Recession.

Which of those things, or maybe something else, is the thing that most defines you or your generation in some way as you see it? Those are just some points of recent history to jog your memory and some not-so-recent history. You tell us, what was the biggest news event of your life if you're in your 60s today, 211-243-3-WNYC, and your most memorable concert for a little fun if you want to throw that in, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your phone calls if you're in your 60s on the biggest news events of your life, and perhaps your most memorable concert. I see that a few people are calling in to cite the AIDS crisis as the biggest news event of their life. Let me take one or two of those calls first. Barbara in Washington. Now, let's see, is this Washington Heights, or is this Washington DC?

Barbara: Washington Heights,-

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Barbara.

Barbara: -Brian, Thank you. It's funny, I've always observed that some people's lives are shaped by these extraordinary events. I'm so grateful for this series. My father was born in 1915 and I could never understand why he couldn't get over the Great Depression until AIDS happened to me. I was working on Broadway, I was a general manager. People started to get sick and die, and then we found out what it was and nobody was doing anything.

I lost over 200 friends to AIDS. It completely changed everything about how I lived my life. I was doing Broadway theater in 1982. I was a general manager of the Broadway musical Nine so I'd achieved quite-- I was lucky I had some success quite early, but I couldn't stick with the all-singing, all-dancing of Broadway. I moved on to doing things with the performance artist Annie Sprinkle and Penny Arcade who were talking about AIDS and activism and healing. The AIDS crisis stripped away sexuality and spirituality from my entire community. I've spent my life trying to bring that back.

I eventually left the theater to found something called Urban Tantra, which is an inclusive practice for people of all shapes, sizes, colors, races, ages, whatever, that embraces sexuality, spirituality, and emotional well-being that never would have happened without AIDS. It brought a lot of miracles and a lot of connection to my life, [sobs] but as I'm talking to you, I can see the faces of those 200 people I lost.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, Barbara.

Barbara: It was absolutely the overriding impetus for everything I do today is to make sure that we never again go through a pandemic so callously and with so little understanding and love.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned in some of the earlier segments in the series that there are at least two different ways people might relate to the big news events of their time that they're calling in with. It can directly affect you, which obviously is the case in your case, or people can just see it in the media and not be so personally affected but still be profoundly affected, but they're different, right? You were personally affected by this and it really changed your life.

Barbara: Completely. It defined it, but in a good way. Yes, in a good way ultimately.

Brian Lehrer: You did tell our screener that you want to mention a concert, right?

Barbara: Yes. I grew up in Newport, Rhode Island so I grew up with the Newport Jazz Festival, so there are many concerts. The one that comes to mind is it was 1971. I was a teenager and I was working in the box seat section right near the stage right under the outdoor stage. We were outdoors. The audience extended up into a hill and there was a fence that kept the ticket buyers from the people who just sat on the hill to listen to the music. When the crowd would get rowdy on the other side of the fence, they would typically throw open the gate to prevent a riot, to just open the gates. The freebie people came in, they sat down.

One night they didn't throw open the gates. The folks who were a bit stoned and drunk climbed the gates. The gates came down and suddenly there was a stampede. I was in the box seat section and Dionne Warwick was singing What The World Needs Now is Love. I saw her look out with absolute terror as she kept singing What The World Needs Now is Love as the mob moved towards the stage. Bottom line, that was the last night for the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport for many, many years, but everybody got out safely except the piano, which had been used as a trampoline.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. That is a concert memory. Wow. Barbara, thank you so much for your phone call. I really, really appreciate it. Let me take one more mentioning the AIDS crisis centrally, and then we'll move on to some other things. Richard in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Richard: Thank you. Barbara reminded me of a lot of stuff. I moved to New York in the fall of '80 and it was the perfect time for the AIDS crisis. I spent a good 15 years of the late '80s, early '90s, mid-'90s involved with ACT UP. It was a time.

Brian Lehrer: You said you're 69, so that would have hit as you were in your late 20s.

Richard: Yes. Came to New York to go to graduate school. The one real big thing that I did in ACT UP was I was the first person to heckle George Bush I. We had gone to Albany to give Mario Cuomo a hard time. We found out Bush was going to be speaking to a business group about AIDS the following day, so I went down with a group of people and no sleep. When we went into where the speech was going to be, the other people started chanting and the security went for them. I grabbed a name tag off the table, and for the rest of the day, I was Sandra Thurman, who later became the AIDS tsar for Clinton. Got in and managed to, with Urvashi Vaid, break up the speech for a while.

Brian Lehrer: Did it accomplish something?

Richard: [chuckles] Who knows? The best thing about all of that was the Secret Service agent that took me outside, I'd been standing on a chair, got me out of the ballroom, and I said, "I'll go. I did what I'm going to do." He said, "Make sure this guy gets his coat," which is what I said. Then later he came out to where the picket was outside the ballroom and shook my hand and apologized for having to throw me out.

Brian Lehrer: You got a concert for us, Richard, also?

Richard: [laughs] Yes, I do. Traffic in early '70s matched closely by the first time I saw Roxy Music, which was the weekend of Three Mile Island, so that would have been the late '70s.

Brian Lehrer: Richard, thank you so much for adding your voice. A lot coming in on Twitter. Listener writes, "Born in 61 so that's my age for a few more months. Apollo 11 moon landing is my touchstone event. It showed that anything is possible." Another one, "My news item was the fall of the Iron Curtain. My best concert was when The Who played at my high school in 1968 in Overland Park, Kansas. They were the warm-up group for The Buckinghams," [chuckles] who I don't even know who The Buckinghams were.

Listener writes, "I am 66 and I find it hard to believe that no one has mentioned the election of Barack Obama as president." Jimmy in Woodside. Oh, not Jimmy in Woodside. Yes, Jimmy in Woodside. You are on WNBC. Hi, Jimmy.

Jimmy: Hey, good to talk to you. Nixon resigned. So many of my friends came back shattered from Vietnam, and Nixon just quitting and leaving it in the dust was meaningful. I was active on campus. They said, "My work here is done."

Brian Lehrer: Of course, the work of whatever you considered the movement you were involved with wasn't really done, right?

Jimmy: No, the war still went on.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting that you relate it to the war because Nixon didn't resign because of the war in Vietnam and his escalation of the bombing of Cambodia and all of his role in it. He resigned because of Watergate. How did you see the two relating to each other?

Jimmy: I thought he prolonged the war after '68. He was an opportunist. Started in '68 after LBJ resigned. He didn't resign, that I'm not going to lie. I missed the draft by a year, but I had cousins and friends say, "Do whatever you can to stay out of here."

Brian Lehrer: You got a concert for us.

Jimmy: Okay. The warm-up groups for the concert at the Singer Bowl a month before Woodstock. I was working two jobs. I couldn't go to Woodstock. Edwin Hawkins' singers opened following the Ten Years After. Jeff Beck Group Rod Stewart who brought in a band they did Battle of the Bands with called Led Zeppelin, and the headliner group which had the number one song was the Vanilla Fudge.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that must have been a long show.

Jimmy: My mom wasn't too pleased with the hour.

Brian Lehrer: That was a week before Woodstock you said?

Jimmy: It was a month before Woodstock, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Jimmy, thank you very much. Listener tweets a concert. "John Cage and Sun Ra at Coney Island, Sideshows by the Seashore." Boy, that's a very avant-garde concert for Coney Island. Teresa in Jackson Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Teresa.

Teresa: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a real listener. I also think your previous callers were so interesting. Barbara, I hear you. I wanted to bring up something that didn't affect me necessarily personally, but it was Al Gore conceding the election because I feel that it has had worldwide implications in terms of climate change, in terms of the war in Iraq, and how we view history now.

Brian Lehrer: The contrast, we've talked about this many times on the show, that even if Al Gore and many of his supporters thought that he really won Florida in 2000 and therefore really won the election and that the supreme court was horribly wrong or even corrupt in a partisan sense in ruling for George Bush in that case, what did Al Gore do different from Trump? He stood up and he said, "I concede the election. We value the peaceful transfer of power. George Bush is my president."

Teresa: Exactly. I don't even know if 911 would have happened, but had it happened, I think we would have done things differently and much more measured. I think history has changed because of that election.

Brian Lehrer: You have a concert for us?

Teresa: I do. Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park in 1981. Unbelievable.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very, very much. Regina on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Regina.

Regina: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I love your show. I have a public and personal event to share. I experienced the three assassinations very personally in the 1960s. Very young with Kennedy. The major one that affected me was Martin Luther King, but it wasn't until I went to high school that it became very personal. I'm white and I went--

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in for a second because you say the three. Do you mean the two Kennedys and Ken because there was also Malcolm X? There were other assassinations, too.

Regina: I guess those three are the ones that hit me the hardest at the time of what I knew when I was that age. It wasn't until I was in high school a few years later after Martin Luther King was assassinated that-- I went to an all-girls high school and I'm white. It was all white except for one Black girl who was beginning our school. Right before she moved in, her house on Staten Island, the house was burned down. Our teacher organized a silent march to her home. We walked five miles in silence and then prayed and sang outside her house with candlelight.

That place profoundly affected me to this day that recently I just got a doctor of ministry degree, and racism was my topic. I've never forgotten the Martin Luther King assassination, but then how it became so personal when a classmate house was burned down in my own community. It was just heartbreaking. I cited her story in my dissertation when I wrote it. It was really profound.

Brian Lehrer: Has it affected what kind of work you went into or anything like that?

Regina: Yes. I'm in ministry and I'm a social worker also in ministry. It has profoundly affected my work and my political views and Black Lives Matter and so on.

Brian Lehrer: You have a concert for us?

Regina: Not really, even though I love music, but I like them all. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Don't have to. Regina, thank you very much. Here's a tweet from a listener that just came in. "Most memorable time was the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing where four little girls were killed. I was a little Black girl age eight living in St. Albans, Queens. I was scared, I was afraid to go to my own church." Peter in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hey, how are you? Normally I would have cited 911 just because of the aftermath, frankly, the communitarian feel that just enveloped the city for weeks and months. Really what eclipsed that for me was when they called the race for Biden. I just remember learning about it and immediately needing to go outside. It was almost like seeing a wave at a stadium. People started to learn the news, people started honking their horns. It was like this 200-pound weight was lifted off everyone's collective chest. People were honking their cars. It's the sole time in my life I've seen spontaneous dancing in the streets. It was just remarkable. It really was.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting that for you at age 62, you told our screener 62, that these events are [crosstalk] relatively later in your life. Help me do the math. You would have been about 40 for 911. Of course, the Biden election was so recently. When you listened to all the other callers and the kinds of things we're talking about, Watergate, the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, or maybe no, you were too young for the Kennedy assassination, but the civil rights era things. [crosstalk] Yours are from relatively later in your life. I'm curious how you integrate that with what might have been more formative experiences that could imprint on you early.

Peter: The prompt, if you will, was what event was the most meaningful.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, correct.

Peter: I lost a lot of friends to AIDS, for instance. That was like a blanket crappiness, if you will.

Brian Lehrer: Right, had a similar thought.

Peter: One of the more early events that really, really jarred me was when Lennon was killed. That really, really jarred me, but not in the same way that the Biden-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the 911 and getting rid of Trump. Peter, thank you very, very much. One more that goes back, way, way back. Karen in Huntington, you're on WNYC. Hi, Karen.

Karen: Hi, Brian. Yes. I recall the anti-war gathering at Kent State University. I think it was 1970. I was only in sixth grade, but for me, it was a media event that profoundly affected me. I felt frightened by that as a young girl that these people were anti-war. It was a peace rally and the National Guard came in and changed things.

Brian Lehrer: The Ohio National Guard killed four people.

Karen: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: There was a hit record that came out of that from Neil Young-

Karen: Four Dead in Ohio.

Brian Lehrer: -or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Right.

Karen: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Four Dead in Ohio.

Karen: Four Dead in Ohio-

Brian Lehrer: It became a-

Karen: -and the John Filos photo. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -touchstone of the anti-war movement. That had an effect on you when-- You weren't even in college yet.

Karen: I wasn't in college, but I had a very progressive teacher, Mr. U Holiday. He had us think about this and line up in the classroom and say what side you were on. Many of my classmates were on the side of the National Guard. The kids were acting out. They had to be subdued and I couldn't understand that.

Brian Lehrer: You want a little comic release-

Karen: They were unarmed.

Brian Lehrer: as we come to the end of the segment?

Karen: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Listener tweets, "The moon landing. I thought you wanted real historic events."

[chuckling]

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a concert for us to end the show then?

Karen: I do. Yes, I do. It was a small lucky moment. I saw Dave Mason at Adventureland Inn on Route 110 at the beginning of his career. I didn't know how great a musician he was going to come and be. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: The Huntington caller remembers the concert on Route 110. Karen, thank you very much, and thanks to all of you for calling in. I think these have been wonderful and I'm sure illuminating for anybody who's not the same age as the exact people calling in. Tomorrow, it's going to be for those of you in your 50s, and the next day, for people in your 40s at the moment, the biggest news events and most memorable concerts of your lifetime. I'm Brian Lehrer. Thanks for listening.

 

 

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