1962

Next week, the term starts at West Virginia University's branch of Osher Life-Long Learning. Both Joe and I are teaching ambitious six-week classes. His is called "Old Testament Rituals: Don't Try These At Home." Mine is called "Great Hits of 1962." I've already taught four-week classes on the top 40 hits of 1960 and 1961. I've expanded to six-weeks to include the Country, R&B, Album and Adult Contemporary (formerly Easy Listening) charts.

Most of the people in my class were in high school in 1962, so this music will resonate with them. My classes have been popular and well-reviewed. I was in seventh and eighth grade in 1962. I had my bar mitzvah, my voice changed (after my bar mitzvah); I got braces. I was tiny, but just starting to grow, and new kids, annexed in seventh grade, joined us in eighth. I tried to be friends with them, and eventually succeeded, more in ninth grade than eighth. In eighth I tried and failed to be a clown, and the new kids had established friendships among themselves going back to elementary school.

I was in the top class in seventh grade, after not being in that class in fifth and sixth. I was a whiz at our thrice-weekly Hebrew school, winning "Best Student" in sixth grade. But in seventh, in the top class, deluged with homework, I found it hard to keep up. My seventh-grade classmates included Rodger Kamenetz, the author of "The Jew In The Lotus" and other books. He started a Jewish Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and later at the New Orleans campus. In eighth grade, we were joined by Wendy Sherman, who became Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton. I often think that my class at Sudbrook Junior High in Pikesville, Maryland was the smartest class in the history of Baltimore County Junior High Schools. If I'm right about that, then I was the dumbest one in that class. Not to mention an undiagnosed ADD case.

Mrs. Crain, our seventh grade CORE teacher, had us keep a notebook of assignments, in order, to turn in after a few weeks. While others turned in perfectly well-ordered folders of material, all I had was a handful of half-finished assignments. Mrs. Crain asked for a conference with my parents. She didn't believe me when I told her they refused to come in. She had my mother write a letter explaining why she couldn't come in. In the letter, my mother promised to help me with my schoolwork, which she never did.

Outside of my own life, the big issue I remember from 1962 was civil rights. Baltimore was still fully segregated, down to the weekday afternoon teen dance show, The Buddy Dean Show, which had African-American kids on alternate Fridays as "special guests." People who have seen some iteration of "Hairspray," based on the Buddy Dean Show, think that was made up. Our synagogue had stopped sponsoring trips to Gwynn Oak Park, the amusement park near our house, featured in "Hairspray" (filmed elsewhere as Gwynn Oak was torn down before the original "Hairspray") because they wouldn't allow African-Americans to go there. Diplomats from newly-independent African countries were refused lunch at restaurants on US 40 between Baltimore and Wilmington, while on their way to the United Nations in New York, creating  international incidents. President Kennedy pushed up the schedule to build Interstate 95 to bypass those towns. Maryland House Restaurant was planned to be in the median of the highway, designed to be integrated. The road, now called Kennedy Expressway, opened in November, 1963, just before Kennedy was assassinated.

I took dance lessons in the spring of 1962. I learned the waltz, fox trot, cha-cha and mambo, my mother's idea being that I could dance with my grandmother at my bar mitzvah party. As it was, because it was a luncheon on Saturday afternoon, my Orthodox grandmother vetoed live music. My bar mitzvah was on October 27, the day the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. This was the first time I bargained with God. "Okay," I said, "There will be a nuclear war and we will all die. But can I please have my bar mitzvah first?"

For those of us living in suburban America, with two parents working before that was the norm, life was good. My parents paid $75 a month on their mortgage, they had a beautiful 1961 Oldsmobile convertible, which cost about $1500. They were still young and attractive at thirty-four and forty; my father had his first toupée. Aside from the usual issues of being twelve and thirteen, my life was good.

In music, too, this was a peak year for American pop music, before the British Invasion. This was the music Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were hearing in England. Lines were being crossed in popular music. African-American Ray Charles' album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" hit all the charts. Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and The Orlons, all from Philadelphia, crossed over to the Top 40 charts with dance hits "The Twist," "Mashed Potato Time" and "The Watusi." African-American owned record company Motown had hits by The Marvelettes, The Countours, The Miracles and Mary Wells. Jewish Artists like Neil Sedaka scored with "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," and Jewish composers like Carole King and Gerry Goffin had hits with "Up On The Roof" for The Drifters and "The Locomotion" for their babysitter, Little Eva, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote "Only Love Can Break A Heart" for Gene Pitney, and Phil Spector produced Pitney's "He's A Rebel" for The Crystals.

Italian-Americans also did well, with the hot new group of the year The Four Seasons, hits by Connie Francis, and Tony Bennett's famous "I Left My Heart In San Francisco."

Country music had Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and several hits by pint-sized teenager Brenda Lee.

1962 was the year the soundtrack of "West Side Story" topped the charts from May through June 1963, the year of "My Son, The Folk Singer" by Allan Sherman, and the iconic first Peter, Paul and Mary album.

There was American music by and for everyone, in a way presaging the coming of age of the civil rights movement the following year, as kids across America were listening to music by Jews and African-Americans without prejudice.

I'm stoked for this class. 1962 was an era of hope, an era when we thought change might be for the good and our country would be more inclusive and more free.

My class is for six Thursdays from one to three P.M. (followed by Joe's class at three) at Mountaineer Mall, Morgantown, starting September 29. Go to www.olliatwvu.org to sign up.