One of the things I loved asking my students on the first day of class was, “What is the first historical event you remember?” It introduced them to me and to the class, and allowed them to think about history in a very personal way. This was usually a question they had never considered, so it was a bit of self-discovery, and it also gave them a hint of things to come in the class. I taught history through stories and then interconnected the stories with dates, not the other way around. After all, are you the sum total of the dates on your tombstone, or a lifetime collection of your experiences and ideas?
I preferred teaching the evening courses. I found generally that these students were a bit older, often taking classes toward degrees paid for by their employers, working folk who buckled down into the business of learning – sometimes they were a little too focused! So this icebreaker was a fun start.
Given the different ages in the classes, I found that I had students who remembered voting for Truman (truly!), remembered the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, 9/11, the death of Michael Jackson. The answers were as varied as the students themselves. At some point, I would always jump in with my own first memory.
My own experience was that of the unfolding Watergate scandal in Richard Nixon’s presidency. I remember my younger aunt and uncles and their friends, all at least 10 years my senior, passionately arguing out the finer points of the daily news bulletins. Each visit to my grandmother’s house during those years exposed me more and more to the ideas of morality in high office; the mechanics of possible impeachment; how to prosecute others involved in the scandal; and, ultimately, Richard Nixon’s resignation (and Ford’s pardon of him). I was born in 1968, so these events made an impression on a very young girl. How has it affected me? Well, I take a strong stand that morality in high office is of paramount importance. After all, if you don’t have dignity and morality, how can you be trusted to run the vast machinery of government itself? I believe in impeachment as a mechanism by which officeholders can be brought to justice, and I believe the Senate needs to do its part to sentence the impeached officeholder. I believe in much of the Democratic platform and have only twice voted for Republicans (because they were, honestly, the right people for the job). I have voted my conscience for each candidate, and have hoped that my vote is reflected in the candidate’s vision, candor, willingness to work hard, and to do so in a way that brings honor to the post. My personal politics are much to the left of center, and I am willing to fight for the human rights I see as paramount to a functional society.
Yes, all of this came out of the years of Nixon’s long downfall. As a 5- to 8-year-old, I absorbed the arguments for and against this man in office, who came to represent the frustrations I felt at the time. What also came out was my willingness to let students know that I might have a blind spot in seeing things from the liberal end of the spectrum, and that they had a right to know it. I also expected that they would challenge me – kindly, gently – when they felt I was overlooking important sides in any event. I’m proud to say that they did, and I learned a lot from them. Encouraging them to open up early in the semester always yielded amply productive fruit, and made our classes much more interesting than a mere lecture ever did.
I enjoyed this exercise so much that, while standing in a vast line to vote at my precinct, I asked people around me the same thing. I was delighted that one of the women standing next to me was from Russia, now a citizen, and excited to vote. But her memory was more sobering: when she was a child, she remembered her father tuning their radio to a particular wavelength, listening to static, and then, a beeping noise. He went stark white and said, “Oh my god. This means we will have war with the United States.” The beeping he heard was Sputnik, the first orbiting satellite in history, and the fear he expressed was not out of the realm of possibility. Wewere in an arms race, with the production of nuclear weapons doubling every year some years. Sputnik was, surely, he thought, a provocation that the Americans would challenge. Well, we did… by building and sending into orbit our own satellites, rockets, and then manned spaceflight (though Russia, again, was first in this feat). Ultimately, we went to the moon. But this woman, waiting in line with me, still saw her father’s face, and the palpable fear of a nuclear war that would end the world. It’s a heck of a first memory of a historic event!
What is yours?
Leave a Reply