I began thinking about 1957, the year I was born, and I was trying to find out how the average life expectancy has changed from that year until now. Just so you will know, it is 77 now as compared to 69.5 in 1957.
Of course if you are non-female, as I am, then you need to knock three years off of that number. If I do in fact hit this average number (which I somehow have managed to do in many endeavors to this point), then I am looking at only 27 more years of life on this old earth. As my mother would say – “You better get busy.”
But back to 1957. In that year the U.S. was over a decade into the fertile period known as the baby boom. In ‘57 there were 4.3 million babies born in the United States. No year before or since has there been so many. Needless to say the competition has been brutal.
1957 was the year when Russia launched into orbit a small basketball size satellite known as Sputnik 1, and the “Space Age” began.
On a more ominous note, that was also the year that the same once feared Communist superpower successfully tested its first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), which for years caused American grade school children everywhere to practice preparing for a nuclear attack by crawling under their little wooden desks. No one was too worried because we had our own missiles for defense, but it must have made millions of parents breathe easier knowing their kids were protected from an atomic ball of fire by those wooden desks.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 was Lester Bowles Pearson, one of the most respected members of the U.N. General Assembly, who won the award for his work in resolving the 1956 Arab-Israeli War. Heaven only knows what the Middle East and the rest of the world would be like today if differences had not been resolved over there.
Peace wasn’t everywhere however as Communists that year attacked a small eastern country in the China Sea known as South Vietnam.
The Republicans were in the White House in ’57.Most everybody liked Ike and even felt okay about Dick, the VP who had not yet found a need to be tricky.
Americans were trying to get along better. There were only four homicides for every 100,000 people that year. But closer to home, tensions were edgy, as the Little Rock Nine were not receiving a very friendly welcome at their new school. But Ike’s army was bigger than Orval’s and things eventually settled down.
In sports that year things were better for a young African-American woman named Althea Gibson who would win the Championship at Wimbledon and also the U.S. Open. The Milwaukee Braves defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series. Hank Aaron was the league MVP. The Boston Celtics beat the St. Louis Hawks for the NBA crown. A decade later both the Braves and Hawks would move their franchises to Atlanta.
North Carolina defeated Kansas in three overtimes for the men’s NCAA Championship and in what must have been an early trend – the football championship was shared, by Auburn and Ohio State.
Doug Ford won the Masters that year and Dick Mayer received a check for almost $10,000 for his victory in the U. S. Open, while future Hall of Famers Nancy Lopez and Seve Ballesteros were just opening their eyes. Others born in ’57 destined for fame were Katy Couric, Ray Romano, Vanna White, Donnie Osmand, and Osama Bin Laden.
A new duo called Tom and Jerry began their recording career, but soon changed back to their real names of Simon and Garfunkel. “Leave It To Beaver” appeared on CBS to show America what the ideal family looked like and “Around the World in 80 Days” somehow beat out “Bridge on the River Kwai” for best picture, as America joined Lauren Bacall in mourning the passing of Humphrey Bogart.
Yeah I guess 1957 was a good year to be born. We were too young for Vietnam and too old for Desert Storm. We saw the beginning of Rock and Roll and as everyone knows, that will never die (Hey - Elvis’ only below the waist Ed Sullivan performance was in 1957!).
We studied in the seventies and got greedy in the eighties.
We lost hair and eyesight in the nineties and will hopefully find wisdom in this decade or the next, so that when we pass this great country along to those who follow, we will be able to leave things at least a little better than we found them, and that we will find a way to give back as much as was given to us.