52 Years Ago

It was my birthday yesterday.  Hip hip hooray!  Lots of well-wishes, blessings, messages and phone calls came my way.  The cockles of my heart were warmed.

I was born in 1960.  I always liked the fact that I was born on a nice even year like that.  It helps me keep track of my age easier.  I need all the help I can get.  You know when you're 16 and you can't imagine why old people can't remember how old they are?  The birthdays simply stack up after a while and it's harder to keep track of, that's why!  Today, I'm definitely 52 and I started to think, what was going on the month I was born?  I was the fourth child born to a rural Pennsylvania family, but what was happening in the larger world in November 1960?

Here's what I found:

 A new house cost about $16,500.  Stamps were 4 cents each.  An attendant would fill up your gas tank, wash your car windows and check your oil, all for the cost of 31 cents/gallon gasoline. A gallon of milk cost 49 cents, but it came in glass bottles with cream floating on top, that were delivered to your door by your local Milk Man. Butter was 67 cents per pound. A pack of gum cost a nickel.  You could buy ice cream in a 1/2 gallon box for 79 cents.  Minimum wage was $1.25 an hour, so those prices might not have seemed like such a bargain at the time.

"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" opened on Broadway-- the movie starring Debbie Reynolds came out 4 years later.   Elvis Presley released his recording of "Are You Lonesome Tonight."  Clark Gable died the day after he finished filming "The Misfits" with Marilyn Monroe.  Johnny Horton, famed singer (at least in our house) of "The Battle of New Orleans," died in a car crash at the age of 35. 

 Five bombs were set off in New York subway cars in October and November 1960, injuring 58 people and killing one. Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States. John F. Kennedy barely beat Richard M. Nixon in the presidential election.  The popular vote for JFK was only 1/6 of one percent higher than that for Nixon.  

There was a coup attempt in South Vietnam.  Nicaragua was invaded by exiled rebels and the U.S. Navy was called in to help defeat those rebels.  Both the U.S. and the USSR were launching nuclear submarines.  The Polaris sub was described as "the world's most credible deterrent system." Perhaps the largest solar flare ever recorded disrupted communications world wide.  Syrian security forces were believed to have started a fire in a movie theater filled with 152 children.   Leftist rebels attempted a coup in Guatemala which was put down with American assistance.  Dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic ordered the murder of the three Mirabal sisters.  He was assassinated himself six months later.  The CIA director briefed JFK on plans to overthrow the Castro government-- later to become the problematic Bay of Pigs Invasion.  There was a crisis in the Congo.


Sammy Davis, Jr. married white Swedish actess May Britt at a time when interracial marriage was always scandalous and still illegal in some states.  

6-year-old Ruby Bridges and three other little girls were the first African-American children to attend "white" public schools in New Orleans.  

W.W. Hamilton died.  He was a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention who was forced to resign after he married his niece.   The second weather satellite was launched.  Wilt Chamberlain set the NBA record for number of rebounds (55) in a game which remained unbroken for nearly 50 years. 

 John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Amy Grant were born on the same day (the 25th). 

 And... I was born on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my mother going into labor at a family Thanksgiving get-together.

Baby Me and my family

It's interesting to look at the total upheaval of the world then.  We like to think it was a simpler time and in many ways it was.  Yet, the world was fraught with both innovation and great danger at that time as much as it is now.  Revolutions, racial strife, atomic weapons, razor-thin election margins... these occurrences were going on then and they are going on now.  It makes me think of Ecclesiastes 1:9: " What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;  there is nothing new under the sun."  But another thing is the same and always will be-- God's in charge.  As we are told in Hebrews 13:5, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you."  God is with us.  I am very glad that statement was true long before 1960, has been true in the 52 years since, and will be true forever for those who trust in Him.