People who graduated from high school fifty years ago this month may want to indulge in a bit of nostalgia by exhuming a transcript of their commencement speech and having their lawyer take a closer look at it. Were all of that year's inspiring words more of a variation of the "campaign promises" concept or did those inspirational words come with an implied guarantee? If so, it might be time to adhere to one of the basic principles established in the Constitution, by America's founding fathers: "Sue the bastards!"
Would it be an example of poignancy if a kid who got a brand new car as a high school graduation present in June of 1961 were still driving that same car today? In the Spring of 1961, the last B-52 rolled off the Boeing production line and many of them are still in use to this very day.
What else hasn't changed since the class of 1961 was promised a better world?
Before turning the keys to the White House over to Jack Kennedy, the departing president (a general from WWII), had warned folks not to let the military industrial complex become America's guiding light (at the end of the tunnel?). It didn't take long for the new young President to send American troops, as advisors, abroad doing the political version of what "location scouts" do for movie making.
Radio soap operas were transitioning into TV series, but when that class had started high school in the Fall of 1957, many of them were still available on radio. The radio audience had wondered, like Helen Trent, could a woman, after her 35th birthday, find romance? It would be well into the 70's before that question would become relevant to the class of 1961.
What ever happened to "Our Gal Sunday"? She was, as listeners were informed at the start of each broadcast, someone "from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado," and she had "in young womanhood married England's most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope." How did that work out for her?
What ever happened to: "Aunt Jenny," "Young Doctor Malone," "Just Plain Bill," "Ma Perkins," and/or "Nora Drake"?
The members of the graduation class of 1961 are sure to be retired and collecting their Social Security checks by now and so they will have plenty of leisure time to look up the fate of those fictional characters on the Internets.
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