Back in Time to ’69

I’m posting this photo because Siblings Day was this week and I’ve been missing my parents recently.  I was looking for a family photo that I hadn’t posted before and thought about this one.  How is it that this photo has not been online before?  It is so quintessential Landry Family.  It was taken in 1969 and that fact caused me to reminisce about that year.  So many transitional things were happening that year beside just the obvious one of changing from the 60s to the 70s.

In January of 1969 the music group the Beatles had their last live gig together shortly before Richard Nixon became the nation’s president.  In February the population of the USA broke 200 million and it witnessed the first flight of those infamous flying machines – the 747 – that would become commercial the following year.  In March tensions about the Vietnam War lead Nixon to promise that the US would end their involvement by the following year.  April showers bring May flowers.  In this case, two computers at universities in California were able to send messages to one another and now we have the interweb.

In May of 1969 people were able to see themselves in a different way.  They were able to see color photos of the Earth taken from space.  And I’m sure as a direct correlation to that, Disney World began construction.  June was the saddest month of all to me.  The last episode of “Star Trek” was aired.  What?  No more views of that glorious Enterprise soaring through the cosmos?  (An Enterprise that I recently found out was built by my mom’s first cousin.  A mind-blowing fact for a Trekkie like me!)  Sure there was a new TV show called “Hee Haw” and the Stonewall riots were that month, but those events did not soothe me at the time.  I was a bit soothed in July when the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon and traipsed around with their dusty footprints.  I remember getting stickers of the different space missions from cereal boxes and putting them on a shelving unit in our bedroom.

August of 69 was the month of Woodstock and the Manson “family” murders.  More on that later.  In September the first ATM was introduced and in October PBS was begun.  Yes, there was a time before ATM machines and PBS.  In November “Sesame Street” was introduced to the world.  On the science front Harvard researchers were able to isolate a single gene, which is particularly notable since I am involved in genetic genealogy.  To end the year, December called for the first draft lottery since World War II.

Yet in a small town in the Deep South, there was a nuclear family that went about its daily business almost as if in a protective bubble.  I’m talking about the Robert J. Landry, Jr. family in Jennings, Louisiana.  It consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Landry, Jr. and their six children.  (That was her name!  She got letters addressed that way and she signed our report cards the same way.)  In 1969 our ages were from 7 to 16.  It was the prime time for our little nuclear family.

Daddy turned 40 at the beginning of the year and Mom was still in her 30s.  None of us had started wearing glasses nor dating anyone seriously.  It was just Mom and Dad and six kids in a three bedroom house.  That’s right.  Three boys in two beds in one room and three girls in one bed in the other.  It was as cozy as could be until one brother decided to light a match with a bunch of fuses next to him!

By the way, on the back row is Jodie, Rob, Karen and Al.  In the front is Bob, Betty, Van (me), and Jamie.  A moment frozen in time.  So different than the events in the outside world in August of that year.  When I thought of posting this photo before, it was always with the idea of posting a photo from Woodstock along with it.  And the Manson “family” was not like the family that I experienced.  As I said at the beginning, the 60s were ending and the 70s were beginning.  Change is inevitable.