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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we continue the oral history call-in series that we began yesterday on the most defining news event of your lifetime. We're taking this decade by decade. We started yesterday with callers 90 or above. Today, if you're in your 80s, this call-in will only be for you on the most defining news event of your lifetime, local, national, international, whatever.

For a little extra fun, we'll invite you to name the most memorable concert you ever saw if you have one. People yesterday cited things like Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden and a full Beethoven string quartet cycle. How about for you if you're in your 80s? Let me say that all again. This is day two of the oral history call-in series that we began yesterday on the most defining news event of your lifetime.

We're taking this decade by decade. We started yesterday with callers 90 above. Today, if you're in your 80s, this call-in is only for you on the most defining news event of your lifetime. For some extra fun, we'll invite you to name the most memorable concert you ever saw if you have one. Here's the news event that was mentioned the most often by yesterday's callers in their 90s. This is from the first call we took yesterday.

Sheila: The most defining moment from news which, for me, was on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, because I was nine years old. I had no idea that time that anything bad could ever happen to me or my family. I just thought that I lived in this perfectly protected world and, suddenly, I grew up.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila in the West Village there suddenly being forced to grow up at age nine when Pearl Harbor happened. Now, for some of you in your late 80s, it might still be Pearl Harbor. That's okay. If you're 87 now, you were around five when Pearl Harbor was attacked and we entered World War II. Maybe it was that sneak attack or anything about the war that you remember as your most defining news event. Don't overthink it. There's no right answer, no wrong answer. Just see what comes to mind.

If you were born in 1942 and you're 80 years old today, you were three years old when we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, 10 when Eisenhower was elected president, just a little older for the Joe McCarthy era. Anyone want to cite McCarthyism as the most defining news event of your lifetime? If you're 80 today, you were 18 when Kennedy beat Nixon, 19 for the Cuban Missile Crisis, 21 when Kennedy was assassinated, also 21 when Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, came out, 25 for the hippie Summer of Love.

Any 80-year-old hippies in the audience today? Maybe you just bought your first legal cannabis in the village. You were in your late 20s for the height of the Vietnam War and the surge in the anti-war movement. You were 27 for the Stonewall riots. Just the sampling there of some possibly formative big events for people who are exactly 80 now. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, to your calls, if you're in your 80s on the most defining news events of your lifetime. Joe in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hi, Brian. I want to talk to you about VE Day. I was five years old. What happened was something I had never seen at that point in life. A block party broke out on my street. My street, we were blessed because right across the street from where I live was a soda company called Schneider Soda Company and they supplied drinks for people. Down the street was High Grades, which was a meatpacking company that supplied hotdogs and knackwurst and baloney.

Around the corner was an Italian bakery, Venezia bakery on Wilson Avenue. They supplied the bread. The people put garbage pails across the street to stop the traffic, radios in the windows to play music, and people were eating, drinking, dancing. The Italians that lived in the neighborhood brought their favorite wine from their basements that they had made. It was a block party and I had never seen that. As a five-year-old--

Brian Lehrer: That's quite a memory to have as a five-year-old.

Joe: Yes, it just stood out in my mind. All these years later, I can still smell the food. People were cooking in the house and bringing it out and putting it on tables. People were sitting on their stoops eating and drinking and dancing in the middle of the street. What was interesting is one side of the street was mostly German American. The other side of the street was Italian American. We were both celebrating for different reasons.

Brian Lehrer: They were countries--

Joe: The Germans were celebrating because their families were no longer being bombed. The Italians on my side were celebrating because their families were no longer being bombed. The war was over.

Brian Lehrer: Hitler was defeated. Mussolini was defeated. Joe, thank you for that memory. Wow. Stephen in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen: Is that me?

Brian Lehrer: That is you.

Stephen: Hi. Hi, Brian. Oh, my gosh. Joe's memory was just so deeply wonderful. For me, it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the 22nd of November 1963.

Brian Lehrer: November 22nd, 1963.

Stephen: I was in acting class with the legendary Sandy Meisner, who then had left the Neighborhood Playhouse and was with Philip Burton at AMDA on 23rd Street and Second Avenue. I had to go out in the hallway to prepare for an exercise. In the hallway, the registrar of the school, Joyce Worsley, said, "My God, John Kennedy has just been shot in Dallas." I went back into the classroom and I just said that. "The President has been shot in Dallas. The President has been shot in Dallas."

Sandy Meisner was screaming. He was screaming at me. "No, no, no, that's not what you do. That's not how we do this." I said, "No, this is the truth. This is just what happened." I remember that Broadway went dark that night. There were no shows because they were selling orange juice in the theater. We all went to St. Patrick's. Every non-Catholic I know was in St. Patrick's that night. It was overwhelming. That's so overwhelming.

Brian Lehrer: You would have been around 30 then, I guess?

Stephen: No, I was in my early 20s. I was in my early 20s. I was born in 1941.

Brian Lehrer: Right, of course. What am I thinking? Yes, of course. Are there ways in which you have viewed the world through the lens of that event since it shaped you politically or anything like that?

Stephen: Absolutely. I think the world would be so different if he hadn't been shot. Culturally, it would be very different because the entertainment and the people he and Mrs. Kennedy brought to the White House were incredible. Afterwards, the Johnson administration didn't do that. Culturally, I think we went backwards after he left Earth. When I was much younger in Massachusetts in Falmouth, my mom and dad had given a tea when he was running for senator at their house in Falmouth, Mass. I think people paid $50 or $75 to come to the tea. I was much younger when he was-- and he was charming. He was just a delight and playing softball out in the backyard with kids.

Brian Lehrer: Even more crushing.

Stephen: I've never met a politician to have him be the first one.

Brian Lehrer: Been charming for a living. Yes, he was different. Then it must have been even more crushing for you having met him when he was assassinated. Stephen, thank you. Sheldon in Forest Hills, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sheldon.

Sheldon: Hi, hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Sheldon: My most memorable remembrance was in 1947 when the UN, a new organization, granted the division of the former Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It moved me so much that I thought, "Wow, this is great for the world." Now, as an old man, I'm very disappointed with the way things have progressed. By the way, punctuated by a story today on BBC about the entrance into the holy mount by this right-wing leader. I'm disappointed about where things have gone, but that was my most memorable--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, so that's the arc of history leaving you disappointed from what your earliest hopes were because you would have been a kid in 1947.

Sheldon: Yes, I was. I was born in 1936, so I was 11 years old. It was a very moving public experience to see all these people that came out into the street to celebrate. Now, here it is 70 years later and it's just a great disappointment as I said.

Brian Lehrer: Sheldon, thank you for your call. Oh, I've been forgetting to ask people if they have a most memorable concert, but Roger in the village is calling in with one in addition to a news event. Hi, Roger, you're on WNYC.

Roger: Thank you, Brian. I'm a big fan. Well, emotionally, it was the Kennedy assassination. In terms of dread, it was 9/11. I lived in a village. I saw the plane go over my apartment. I had the smell of the fires thereafter for a period of time. My most favorite concert was seeing Duke Ellington in 1958 when I was a student in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot. Duke had a big band of 25 or 30 guys and he blew them away. There were people whistling at him that he was playing one of the favorites, The Leaves of Autumn, the [unintelligible 00:12:06] song. Then he said, "Hey, Johnny Hodges, let's give it to him," and then he hit the A-train, and it was a fabulous experience.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for recalling that, Roger. That was wonderful. You know what's interesting so far other than the concert? Yesterday and today, mostly people remember bad things, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima yesterday. Today, the Kennedy assassination. He brought up 9/11. Only so far, Joe in Queens who remembered VE Day, that celebratory scene that he had as a five-year-old. People are bringing up mostly the worst things that ever happened, although I think Helen in Brooklyn is going to be another exception to that. Hi, Helen.

Helen: Hi, Brian. Yes, I'm going to be an exception. I'm going to talk about August 28th, 1963, the great march on Washington for freedom and jobs. There was an endless line of buses leaving New York. I couldn't see the beginning of it. I couldn't see the end of it. When you come into Washington, you go through the Black slums first. People were standing on their porches and cheering us as though we had come to liberate that city. There wasn't a march.

It was a river of people that was flowing down Constitution Avenue towards the mall, which was filled with people. All the way, it seemed to me that it was the Capitol. There was a couple who must have been from SNCC. They were wearing overalls, which was the kind of SNCC uniform, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. They were holding hands, the young man and the young woman. He began singing Oh Freedom. "Oh freedom over me, and before I'd be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave." We were all there.

Brian Lehrer: We're in the 60th anniversary year of that this year. We will definitely be talking more about that march on Washington as this year goes on. Helen, you were 23, so extremely formative obviously. Thank you so much. Let's get at least one more in here. Sally in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sally.

Sally: Hi. I'm 83. My freshman year at college at the University of Colorado, Sputnik flew over. I'd always been attracted to the moon and the stars in the sky. All of a sudden, I realized that this was another area. It was like a piece of geography that countries could fight over. It's just stayed with me for the rest of my life. The second thing would have been the Cuban Missile Crisis because I realized that geography really is important. We were so close at that time and we had never been so before.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a most memorable concert?

Sally: I certainly do. I had heard The Rite of Spring live many times here in New York. I was in Zurich and I had seen that the Concertgebouw was going to be playing something in The Rite of Spring in their very old concert hall. I got a ticket. Very small hall filled with very formal, very reserved Swiss. The First Symphony, I don't even remember who it was. They barely applaud it at the end. They came in and started The Rite of Spring. It was the most incredible Rite of Spring to this day I've ever heard. At the end, there was dead silence and then the entire audience erupted. It was like the people totally changed.

Brian Lehrer: What a wonderful memory of music and of an early moment in the space program seeing Sputnik. Sally, thank you very much. Thank you all, callers. Tomorrow, the biggest news events of your life for those of you in your 70s.

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