Welcome back, 1968. Have you ever really left us?
Several weeks ago, reporters and editors met en masse to discuss what yearlong project, or projects, we could present to you that might live up to past successes, like our replica pages, "Stark's Greatest Teams" and "Stark's Famous" to name a few in recent years.
Yours truly suggested intermittent features looking back on 1968, that year's historic events and their lasting effect on America to this day. Many are remembered simply by letters or single words: MLK, RFK, Chicago, Nixon, Apollo.
Been done, I was told — 10 years ago, for the 40th anniversary. (And done well, of course.) This relative newbie didn't know. Darn.
Undeterred there remained some way to mark the 50th anniversary of this watershed year without being repetitious, our team realized we had at our fingertips everything we needed: our own archives. We could blend the history readers have craved in a new and completely local way through the headlines, articles and photos from these very pages five decades earlier.
Each Sunday, on the front of our Stark & Local section, we will devote the cover page to recapturing life as seen through the eyes and lenses of Canton Repository and national reporters and photographers for the corresponding week that was in 1968. Together we will relive such monumental events as the war in Vietnam, riots in our country's streets and the history-altering assassinations, alongside the day-to-day happenings around Stark County running the gamut from our reactions to those huge national stories to the more mundane, like a massive snowstorm (coming soon) and sports accomplishments.
I'm practically giddy about what our staff will discover while researching our front pages from 50 years ago. Of course, I'm also someone whose music collection is filled with songs from the 1960s and early 1970s. A rotation is playing in the background as I type to keep me in the appropriate mindset. The songs range from the upbeat, fun and joyous to the angst-ridden protest anthems — just like the year 1968 swung back and forth so wildly.
Rock hall inductee Graham Nash put it this way in a recent interview that included singing partners David Crosby and Stephen Stills when asked about CSN's early music and its political tilt: "Those so-called 'hippie ideals' are still true to this date: that love is better than hate, that peace is better than war, that maybe we should take care of each other and be our brother's keeper, maybe we should take care of our environment. Those 'hippie ideals' are still incredibly important today."
Because many of the issues we faced in 1968 still confound us today. We might disagree on how to solve those problems, depending on our worldview, but we can agree they must be solved.
No, 1968 never has left us. We hope you find insight and reading pleasure in reliving our shared experiences over the next 12 months.
Reach Rich at 330-580-8310 or rich.desrosiers@cantonrep.com.
On Twitter: @richdesrosiers