HULA HOOPS AND DICK CLARK

On March 5, 1963, the Hula-Hoop, a plastic hip-swiveling toy became a huge fad across America when an estimated 25 million Hula-Hoops were sold in its first four months of production alone! It became an icon that is still in some places popular today!

But the Hula Hoop as a symbol is the gravitational pull along with other icons of the 60's, when we began growing into adulthood, formulating opinions and ideas that would, for the most part, stay with us all our lives.

Things such as the Beatles, Edsel's, and astronauts awakened youth like nothing else could. We watched on TV the launch of Apollo and landing on the moon, let alone the Mets winning the World Series. But these events were indicative of the spirit of America! Russia launched their Sputnik, but America made it to the moon. We as a country galvanized and went to the colleges and universities and became mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, to turn once again the tide of leadership in America's favor. This was the same spirit that carried us through the second world war!

And who can forget Woodstock? 400,000 people, kids really, who populated a dairy farm in upstate New York to celebrate in August over 4 days of music and art. It was the beginning of a new set of rules and the tossing of the old and outdated ones.

Yet with all our successes was our moral dilemma, a war we didn't want to fight and a rebellion that
made America pause. "Make love, not war" was the war cry of the ‘Peaceniks'. Daniel Joseph Berrigan, S.J., was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, and poet, who like many others during the 1960s, protested against the Vietnam War that earned him both scorn and respect. He, maybe more than any religious figure demonstrated what the clergy all should have been doing. The government failed both the nation and the brave men and women who went to Viet Nam.