Sunday, July 4, 1976. The Bicentennial.
It was the Bicentennial of American Independence and I was 13 years old
There's been some recent focus on people like me who were young during the Bicentennial and who can recall it. Many of us have real mixed feelings about today, the 250th Anniversary.
The celebrations for the Bicentennial were really a big deal. Students, like me, who were in school at the time had been studying the Revolution in anticipation of it. There were events everywhere. State and local governments were very active in promoting it. The Federal government issued a special series of coins.
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Looking back it's interesting to note how the celebrations came as a relief to the trauma of the Vietnam War and gave the country a sense of optimism again. The war had torn the country apart, and of course we'd lost it. Right after that the country went through the Watergate trauma, and it was suffering by inflation brought about by the war and the Arab Oil Embargo. Things weren't going great, but the Bicentennial gave people a sense we'd get through it.
Gerald Ford was President at the time and was campaigning against right wing actor Ronald Reagan as well as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter.
I'd just completed 7th Grade and turned 13 just before school let out for the summer. I had a job at a wading pool as a lifeguard. It's weird to think of, as I was the only city employee at the pool all day long. I filled it up each day, and drained it every night. They wouldn't let a 13 year old do that now.
As noted, in civics we studied the Revolution that year. I can't recall all that much about the instruction. I do recall the teacher, whom bore sort of a resemblance to Tom Selleck, saying the country had lost the Vietnam War, which was a shock to me. I went home and asked my father, and he had the same view.
They were right, of course.
Fireworks at that time were set off on the municipal golf course. I went up on the roof to watch them.
The IDF conducted a hostage rescue mission at Entebbe, Uganda. 102 hostages, mostly Jewish, were being held by hijackers of the Palestinian PFLP–EO and German RZ groups.
All of the hostages, 33 Ugandan soldiers and 3 hostages died in the raid.
Assassins hired by the Argentine Navy killed three Catholic priests and two seminarians at the San Patricio church in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
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