1968-1971: Of One Death and Two Births 1968, a year when changes swept over the nation as the young adults (18-21) discovered that they too could make a difference in the nation. But why did I decide to center on the years 1968-1971? True, I was only seven years old in 1968, but I remember certain things. I remember watching the television news some nights and seeing the latest list of casualties from the Vietnam highlighted every night. Like some spectar, the television news anchor mentioned that so many people died that day. My mother tells me that we lost a lot of relatives in the Vietnam War. I guess we were similar to a lot of other families, but I never knew who they were. Uncle Jimmy was just a faceless name, an unknown entity. So what? They'll be back, at least I thought so. After all, what is death to an eight year old boy? It really didn't mean much to me, at least not yet. In June, 1968, my awareness about death began to change. I don't really know exactly what caused it, but I suddenly realized one day that people who died would not be coming back. My father told me that I tended to watch the news every night, so I can remember some things about what was happening. I didn't always understand everything I saw, but I did know who Robert F. Kenedy was. I listened every night for whatever the news had to say about him, and I began to hope that he would become president. From what I saw on television, he was the best hope of the country. One night in June, my father and mother took the family to Saint Mary's Hospital because one of my aunts just gave birth to a little girl. Of course, I ended up waiting downstairs in the lobby with my brothers and sister when they visited my new cousin, Tammy. I ended up watching television because there was nothing else to do in this boring place. Just as I started getting interested in a program, a special announcement interrupted the program. A gunman had just shot and killed Senator Robert F. Kenedy, who had just won the California primary. I watched the funeral train as it crossed America sick to my heart. Death, I remember you well. Just has everything started looking well, you showed up to ruin people's happiness. But as yet I still didn't quite understand what you meant. No, that was still to come. The next events occured when I was almost ten years old to just barely ten years old. Until recently I never really thought about them. It hurt too much. But everything that I written before leads up to the events of one summer. The summer when the true meaning of death slammed into my mind with the force of a run away train. The changes began that year still effect me today. June, 1971. Every year my family holds a family reunion down in Evansville to catch up on all the news and gossip that we might have missed. That year we held the event at Burdette Park because my aunt, Mary Ann, was expecting a baby, and that park was the closest one to her house. The next events comes from interviews with my sister Karen and my brother Eric. My cousin Steven and I decided to go down to the lake to see if we could catch some tadpools. Being kids we kind of forgot to ask anybodys' permission. Forgot really isn't the right word. I don't think we ever meant to. After all one of the adults might have said no. So the four of us went to the lake. Things went rather splendedly as it was a bright summer day, and we were relaxing in the sun down by the lake when we one the adults found us. It was Steven's mom. At once she beratted all of us for being so thoughtless in not telling anybody where we were going. Then she turned to my sister who was a teenager and the eldest and really got mad. "How can you take such a risk with my precious Steven? You know that he's delicate, and he might have accidentally drowned," she exclaimed. Steven, who was eight and my favorite cousin, really wasn't all that delicate, but he was her only son. I thought she went kind of overboard, but I kept quiet. After we got back to the group, we were all punished, but Steven got the worst one. His mom made him sit down and not move the rest of the afternoon. August 1971. My aunt decided to go and visit her mom in Peru, Indiana, against the wishes of her husband. Naturally she took Steven and his sister, Annette. They stayed up there about a week before tragedy struck. From what I found out from my mom and what I remember the following happened. Steven was playing in the front yard of my grandmother's house. An ice cream truck approached from one direction. Steven saw the ice cream truck and decided that he wanted some. He started running. He came to two parked cars. He dashed between the two parked cars and into the street to cross to where the ice cream truck waited. The driver of the other car did not see Steven, and he did not look before dashing into the street. Steven, who was just now barely nine, was instantly killed. What is death to a ten year old kid? It means the end of happiness. The loss of the best friend that I ever had. And in such a stupid way. I will never again see Steven laughing and playing under the sun. I remember the visitation at the funeral home rather well. . . There was a third muskateer. Me and Steven were two of them. The third was my cousin, Micky. . . Anyway during the visitation me and Micky got together and talked quietly. We both has just viewed the body, and I must say Steven did not look all that natural. The conversation consisted of only twelve words that both of us muttered. "I wish it was me dead so that Steven could have his life." I wasn't kidding then, and I'm not kidding now. The funeral wasn't pleasant. Naturally my aunt and uncle refused to sit by each other, each blaming the other one for the death. The wake afterwards bombed. None of the kids felt like playing, and the continued bickering between Steven's parents ruined the meal. What a way to remember the life of a special child like he was. It would take ten years before my aunt and uncle got back together. However, the rest of us recovered quickly. A few days before Steven's death, Mary Ann gave birth to a healthy girl, Stephanie, which promised new life before the tragic death of my cousin. Even though I will always carry a remembrance of Steven with me, I was able to carry on with the rebirth of hope that she represented. I started this paper with an overview of two crisises the nation faced and I had a reason for doing it that way. The death of Robert Kennedy was untimely and was a great tragedy. So was Steven's death. Both changed the course of history. Kennedy's death changed the course of the country's history, and Steven's death changed mine. I've grown since the time, but I still feel that my cousin's death mattered more than Kennedy's assassination. The whole time period swept across the nation affecting everybody in one way or the other. The nation recovered and eventually removed itself from Vietnam, but only after the young adults acted. Their culture grew and expanded and their growing pains shook the nation. But not, I think, as Steven's death shook me. Paul Vernon Deffendall April 11, 1994 PREVIOUS POEM NEXT POEM BACK TO FADED GLORY