Long Island

LI Life

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By any measure, the summer of 1969 was extraordinary, in the world, across the nation, and on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>. It was a summer of remarkable achievement, as the U.S. space program won the race to the moon, with help from Long Island's Grumman engineers, who built the lunar module Eagle. 
The Mets marched to a <a href="/topics/World_Series">World Series</a> victory that even their most avid fans couldn't have predicted. Theirs followed the championship runs of two other local teams - the Jets and the Knicks. 
On a farm in Bethel, N.Y., nearly 500,000 people gathered for the Woodstock music festival that would come to symbolize the hopes for making "love, not war." For some, Woodstock also was an orgy of drugs and overindulgence. 
It was a summer of tumult. While students throughout the country marched for civil rights, casualties in the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam continued to mount. On Long Island, the average age of the war dead was 21. By the time summer began, 89 young people from <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> and <a href="/topics/Suffolk">Suffolk</a> had lost their lives that year. 
Those lucky enough to make it home were often greeted with hostility by a public protesting the war and angered by reports of civilian deaths in Vietnam. 
It was a time of shocking scandal and crime. On a tiny island called Chappaquiddick, the scion of the nation's most prominent political family, Sen. Edward Kennedy, drove off a narrow bridge in a mishap that left his passenger drowned and cost him a chance to follow his brother to the <a href="/topics/White_House">White House</a>. 
A week later, a psychotic cult leader named <a href="/topics/Charles_Manson">Charles Manson</a>, and those who followed him, conducted a murder spree in the <a href="/topics/Hollywood">Hollywood</a> hills, killing nine people, including the pregnant actress <a href="/topics/Sharon_Tate">Sharon Tate</a>. 
Images of the violence, the protests, and the war streamed into America's living rooms, where the face of <a href="/topics/Walter_Cronkite">Walter Cronkite</a> graced every TV. Viewers escaped the steady diet of bad news by tuning to lighthearted fare: "Rowan &amp; Martin's Laugh-In," "Here's Lucy" and " <a href="/topics/Walt_Disney">Walt Disney</a>'s Wonderful World of Color." "Sesame Street" made its debut that year. 
On Jones Beach, a sea of teenagers listened to portable transistor radios as Cousin Brucie played <a href="/topics/Stevie_Wonder">Stevie Wonder</a>'s "My Cherie Amour" and the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman." 
Forty years later, those teenage baby boomers are looking back as they plan for retirements that for some are delayed years beyond their hopes. Tom Licari of Amityville, who attended Woodstock just weeks after finishing his junior year at <a href="/topics/Chaminade_High_School">Chaminade High School</a>, went on to become a lawyer with two children. "We were supposed to save the world," he said, "but careers, parenthood, marriage and divorce all got in the way." 
 &gt;&gt; YOUR VOICES : 26 readers tell their stories from the summer of 1969

News

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The Summer of '69: A season that shook the world

John Herman, 58, of <a href="/topics/Dix_Hills">Dix Hills</a>, a vice president in database administration for <a href="/topics/Citigroup">Citigroup</a> 
It was a great summer. I had graduated from North Babylon High School and was starting school that fall at Suffolk Community College. 
I had bought my first car, a sexy, 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback. And then I had my first serious girlfriend. 
I was working part-time at Big Apple supermarket. I arranged it so I could work four hours in the morning . . . then I would shoot over to <a href="/topics/Robert_Moses">Robert Moses</a> beach and stay there until like 4:30 p.m., and I'd be back at work at 5 p.m., and I'd work until 9 p.m. I'd do the same thing day after day after day for the entire summer. 
There was a sense of community then. I can remember walking from one end of the beach to another and listening to the same radio station, WABC. It's not like today, where everybody is isolated with their own iPods. I remember watching <a href="/topics/Walter_Cronkite">Walter Cronkite</a> and the man land on the moon. I was home, watching it on the black and white television with my folks and my brother. It was hard to believe it was really happening. I had followed it all through the '60s. My father had worked at Grumman, and they used to have the Grumman newspaper, and they would have articles about how they were developing . . . the module. I was always interested in it. To finally see it happen was pretty amazing. 
It was in contrast to all the other stuff that was going on by then. The war protests. A lot of people were - I wouldn't say against it, but they weren't really excited about it because they had another agenda. So it was a strange time. 
Nineteen sixty-nine and 1970 were the two best summers. It was the most carefree I could be. -

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Summer of '69: John Herman

William Lucano, 50, of <a href="/topics/Garden_City">Garden City</a>, a salesman for News 12. 
Even being a 10-year-old, I remember all the events of that year. I played <a href="/topics/Youth_Baseball">baseball</a>. Our team was the Heroes, in the Garden City Stewart Little League. I was the pitcher. 
What a year. It was an intense year. All my favorite teams winning. It started with the Jets, in the Orange bowl. Then in mid-June my Little League team won the series. And then the <a href="/topics/New_York_Mets">Mets</a> winning the <a href="/topics/World_Series">World Series</a>. That was a trifecta for me. It was a fantastic time. 
Obviously there would also be the moon walk in July, which my brothers and I were really into. My dad rolled in one of those small black and white televisions with the dog ears into our bedroom. It was three of us. We had bunk beds. I was 10 and my brother Ed was 9 and my brother Kenny was 7. We were just so excited. We all jumped off the bed and we sat Indian style on the floor. We all wanted to be an astronaut after that. Or a baseball player. Or a fireman. Or a cowboy. 
My dad was a huge baseball fan so we all grew up in a big baseball household. He became a Mets fan after the Dodgers left town. My dad was known locally as "<a href="/topics/Youth_Baseball">Baseball</a> Bill." I remember . . . the last out, and the fans that stormed <a href="/topics/Shea_Stadium">Shea Stadium</a>, tearing up pieces of grass so they could plant it in their backyard. We didn't go. We watched it on TV. Just an incredible end to the year, and not to be repeated.

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Summer of '69: William Lucano

Jo-Ann Oakes 60, of <a href="/topics/Bay_Shore">Bay Shore</a>, associate director of publications at <a href="/topics/Stony_Brook">Stony Brook</a> Medical Center. Her husband Bob ("Butch") Oakes, also 60, is a transportation consultant. 
What a difference a year makes! In August, my boyfriend Butch and I were 20, and we went to <a href="/topics/Woodstock">Woodstock</a>. We were lovin' it, groovin' it. I remember walking past people wearing nothing but sandals, love beads and broad smiles. 
One highlight: Richie Havens singing "Freedom." 
Soon after - in December 1969 - the first draft lottery was on television. We watched in the living room. When Bob's birthday came up, with the number 51, we both knew our fate was sealed. Talk about reality TV. 
Our fathers were World War II veterans, and my father believed you always had to support your country. I wore peace signs, I protested the war at Suffolk Community College. In 1969, protesting was fun - but by 1970 it became real. That's when Butch shipped off for <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>, soon after we got married. He became an Army Ranger - he was awarded two Bronze Stars - while I marched in protest in Washington, with his blessing. 
We were lucky. He came back, and we celebrate our 39th anniversary on June 14. It's Flag Day. -

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Summer of '69: Jo-Ann Oakes

Carol Schwartz, 57, of Merrick. A reflexologist. 
My sister and I begged our parents to go to <a href="/topics/Woodstock">Woodstock</a>. We were crawling in a U-Haul van and people were walking along the highway and hopping into our van and hanging all over it. 
We pulled over to a campsite as we got close. I had to call my mother. I remember waiting on line at the phone booth for hours. She said 'You get your sister and come right home now.' We had no food. I remember the rain, the mud, the Port-A-Sans. It was amazing to be there. 
My sister Ronnie, who is in the famous Woodstock poster, was involved in the first birth at the festival. The woman in the next tent went into labor, so she ran to a medical booth and asked 'Did anyone here ever deliver a baby?' One guy said 'I once delivered a pig.' So she dragged him to the tent and before you knew it there was an announcement that the first baby at Woodstock had been born. 
The music was awesome. After Woodstock, I became such a <a href="/topics/Janis_Joplin">Janis Joplin</a> and <a href="/topics/Jimi_Hendrix">Jimi Hendrix</a> fan. The energy was electrifying. I think about all the different faces, all the different looks. But we were all there for one thing and we all got along beautifully.

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Summer of '69: Carol Schwartz

As Denise Maletta stepped forward to accept her high school diploma at Copiague High School in 1969, she wondered whether she could hold herself together. 
Just two days earlier, Maletta found out that her fiance, the son of her high school principal, had been killed in <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>, and his best friend had been killed there the day before. 
She couldn't cry. Not then. Not in front of her fiance's father, Walter O'Connell, who had defied expectations by appearing at the graduation and now was standing on the stage, smiling at her. 
<a href="/topics/Daniel_O%27Connell">Daniel O'Connell</a>'s body hadn't even been returned to his family, yet here was his father, beckoning Maletta into a hug. 
"In that moment, when he hugged me and we looked at each other, I wanted to be strong for him because he was so strong for all of us," said Maletta 58, of Northport, whose maiden name was Fattarusso. "That made it possible for me to get through that day. If he could hold the line, so could I." 
<a href="/topics/The_Class">The Class</a> of 1969 on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> entered adulthood at a seminal time in American history. It was a time when 223 young Americans were dying every week in Vietnam. But it was also a time for life - marriage, music, college, careers. 
"It was the age of the innocents," said Dona Cass-Lautin, who graduated that year from Farmingdale High School. "Because you don't know what's ahead. You never know what you're going to go on to, if you're going on to college, or to work, or to war. You learn what reality is." 
Reality was stark for the young men of the Class of 1969, many of whom became eligible for the military draft once they graduated from high school. That year has the second-highest number of U.S. casualties in Vietnam: 11,616. Many in the class scrambled to get college deferments to avoid the draft. 
"There was always the worry that if you didn't excel in your schoolwork and go to college, you would be next over there," said Robert Raimondi, who attended what is today Farmingdale State College after he graduated in 1969 from Farmingdale High School. "The professors would tell you, 'If you don't make it here, you know where you're going.' " 
It was also a magical year for the Class of 1969, who gathered before black-and-white televisions to watch the moon landing that summer and to imagine a future where technology would push America into the realm of the impossible. 
"The moon landing was a big thing," said Judy Hopkins, 58, of <a href="/topics/East_Moriches">East Moriches</a>, who went to <a href="/topics/Brentwood">Brentwood</a> High School. "The whole country was watching, and it was just an amazing thing to see. It was almost like you were looking into the future." 
It was a bittersweet day for Ellen Koven, who graduated from Levittown Memorial High School in 1969. Her grandmother died on the day of the moon landing. 
"She was a Russian immigrant, old country. So it just seemed kind of ironic that was the day she passed away," said Koven, 58, now of <a href="/topics/Deltona">Deltona</a>, Fla. "The end of one generation, the beginning of a whole new generation." 
While 1969 is synonymous with <a href="/topics/Woodstock">Woodstock</a> in many people's minds, many in Long Island's Class of 1969 didn't go; if their mothers didn't stop them, then the monstrous traffic on the thruway upstate did. 
"I did not go to Woodstock," said Koven. "But I always felt I was part of the Woodstock generation and spirit. There was a real feeling among my peers that we were going to change the world, and we were on the cusp of something great. And the world felt like it was changing." 
One such change was felt at Malverne High School, where in 1969 student protests and sit-ins led to a change in school policy. 
Pamela Corbin remembers 1969 as the year she boycotted Malverne High School. 
The school sat on Ocean Avenue - dubbed "the Mason-Dixon Line," because blacks lived east of it and whites lives west. 
At the time, the school refused to teach black history, and it had only two black teachers although blacks were 40 percent of the student population. 
On St. Patrick's Day, 1969, 137 students and parents were arrested at the high school over the protests - sparked, Corbin said, by the drama teacher's refusal to allow blacks to audition for the lead roles in the school play. 
Students held up their fists in the Black Power salute, and sang gospel songs on the buses headed to the jail. Corbin ended up boycotting school off and on for three months, instead attending a "Freedom School" taught by Sunday school teachers at her church. 
After the arrests, Malverne High School agreed to teach black history and hire more black teachers. 
"These are things I will never forget," Corbin said. "It was the most exciting year of my young life. And it was a culmination of everything." 
YOUR VOICES 
&gt;&gt; Pamela Corbin &gt;&gt; Judith Hopkins &gt;&gt; Robert Raimondi

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A world, and their lives, in transition

Pamela Corbin, 58, Port St. Lucie, Fla. Now an international purser for <a href="/topics/United_Airlines">United Airlines</a> . 
She boycotted Malverne High School for three months during her senior year in 1969 because of racism in the school. She and 136 other students and parents were arrested during a sit-in at the school. The administration eventually ceded to demands for more black teachers and the teaching of black history. 
 "Every time it's St. Patrick's Day, I say this is the day I got arrested in 1969 in a civil rights demonstration. Some people that were in the sit-in - their parents would not allow them to be arrested, and they were pulled out. One girl had her parent take her place, because parents were afraid that an arrest record would hinder your future prospects. . . . We were anally searched. For high school students. It was ridiculous. They didn't have facilities for so many people to be arrested in one day. And we were in jail for four hours. 
"I can't say I was shaken with fear. We were kind of proud. We sang on the way to the bus. We were encouraged by following in the footsteps of our parents, of Martin Luther King. 
"It was the most exciting year of my young life. And it was a culmination of everything."

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Summer of '69: Pamela Corbin

Judith Hopkins, 58, <a href="/topics/East_Moriches">East Moriches</a>, is a teacher at Patchogue-Medford High School. She graduated from <a href="/topics/Brentwood">Brentwood</a> High School in 1969. 
"We really were the last generation of women [who] were earmarked as to what we were doing. Because of that, I wasn't supposed to go to college. A lot of us felt that way - we really didn't have a future . . . I came out of high school and got a secretarial job, because that's what I thought I had to do . . . Even at that point, with people telling you were college material, it meant nursing or teaching . . . We were a child of the Fifties. 
Everyone's mother stayed home, and dad went to work . . . I almost think that I felt I wasn't part of something. Because you saw the news and you saw Woodstock, and, yeah, my mother wouldn't let me go. In some way I felt distant from that . . . I would say the moon landing was a big thing. 
I think you thought the whole country was watching, and it was such an amazing thing to see that. It was almost like you were looking into the future . . . Almost as if anything was possible, and you took a lot of pride in it too, took a lot of pride in being an American."

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Summer of '69: Judith Hopkins

Robert Raimondi. 58, of West Islip is a vicar at St. Peter and St. Paul's Anglican Church in <a href="/topics/North_Babylon">North Babylon</a>. He graduated from Farmingdale High School in 1969. 
'I was the typical 149-pound, 6-foot-3 boy with the huge afro. A typical child of the times. We would protest . . . I was definitely against the war at the time. I don't know why I was against it. I think I was afraid I was going to wind up in it . . . I would do anything not to have to go . . . I remember the days when you would see the service cars coming through the neighborhood. When they went down the block and stopped, you knew someone had been wounded or killed . . . 
In those days, nobody thought of the future because of the war. You really didn't know if you were going to have a future. At that point you were just living for the day . . . [Kids] were carefree for a reason. Drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die, that was it. 
My perspective had changed quite a lot after my father died and I was 17. My whole senior year was a big jolt to me . . . Some of the things that I was wanting [became] nonsensical. People worried about dates and proms. These things all of a sudden had no value to me. There was a much more serious issue on the table. I didn't know what would happen."

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Summer of '69: Robert Raimondi

On summer evenings in 1969, America's battle lines were clear. It was a season of civil unrest from <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> to <a href="/topics/California">California</a>. In <a href="/topics/Pittsburgh">Pittsburgh</a>, demonstrators staged a sit-in at a U.S. Steel construction site to force the hiring of blacks in the industry. Across the nation, groups led by the <a href="/topics/American_Civil_Liberties_Union">American Civil Liberties Union</a> challenged drug laws. And on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>, whites in Central Islip rallied to close Soul Village, a youth center used primarily by blacks in what had been a downtown neighborhood dominated by whites. 
At June's high school graduations across the Island, the auditoriums were a mix of students with long hair and sandals and those with short hair and polished shoes. College campuses erupted in disputes over race, politics and <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>. After black students staged a sit-in, <a href="/topics/Cornell_University">Cornell University</a> agreed to increase minority representation on the faculty. 
Judy Winer of Woodmere remembers her commencement ceremony at Queens College that June, when dozens of graduates protesting the war stood up and walked out to hold a "counter-commencement." 
"Nowadays, these things barely raise eyebrows," she said, "but in 1969, it was scandalous." She remembers hearing the audience whispering in shock as they watched the departure of young men and women in caps and gowns. 
The summer's demonstrations happened in unexpected places. One erupted at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The bar had become a gathering place for gays and transvestites, and before dawn on June 28 the police moved in to arrest 13 people on charges ranging from resisting arrest to disorderly conduct. Dozens reacted by throwing bricks, bottles and a parking meter - and the confrontation was soon celebrated as the birth of the gay rights movement. 
 YOUR VOICES 
 &gt;&gt; Lamar Cox &gt;&gt; Alan Dershowitz &gt;&gt; Robert Gray

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Taking it to the streets and the schools

Gray, 57, of <a href="/topics/Hempstead">Hempstead</a>, is a code inspector for the Village of Hempstead 
I graduated from <a href="/topics/Long_Beach">Long Beach</a> High School in 1969. I didn't attend the graduation ceremony. Most of the African-Americans didn't show up, that was our own little protest. We were probably no more than eight graduates in the class of 1969 that were black. We didn't feel a part of that system, not at all. We grew up in it, we were made to believe that sometimes we were part of it, and then there were other times that they were emphatic about letting us know that we weren't. 
In the summer of '69, I was going to the Martin Luther King Youth Center in Long Beach. We were making sure the younger kids had things to do. We stayed involved. It wasn't the type of turmoil in 1969 that there was in 1968. 
Nineteen sixty-nine was a cool-out year. It was still tough. The [civil rights] violence on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> had subsided, giving people the opportunity to sit down and talk like people. We were only people trying to communicate. 
The Mets, that's something that kind of brought the town together. You saw a group of black and white men playing together, and for a moment, you saw the possibilities. But then again, who knew what was going on behind the scenes? The truth of the matter was that the Mets at that time in 1969 did have something to do with bringing people together throughout the <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> metropolitan area. 
Nineteen sixty-nine was a great time in my life in many respects. My 40th high school reunion is in July. I'm absolutely looking forward to it.

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Summer of '69: Robert Gray

Lamar Cox, 76, of Washington D.C., owner of a security company and former chairman of the Long Island <a href="/topics/U.S._Congress">Congress</a> of Racial Equality in 1969. 
Woodstock wasn't a black thing. Protesting the war - very few black folks were involved in that kind of activity. Minorities and underprivileged were more concerned about basic rights. 
In 1969 we had school district activities where [African-American] students were doing protests, and there had been some violence in a couple of schools. We had a meeting with representatives of a number of school districts . . . <a href="/topics/Hempstead">Hempstead</a>, <a href="/topics/Oyster_Bay">Oyster Bay</a>, Westbury, <a href="/topics/Uniondale">Uniondale</a>, Malverne and Roosevelt. 
I'm not sure what was really accomplished. To change the thinking and the culture of any place it takes awhile, but certainly it was a beginning to have gotten together with the superintendents to highlight the need for change in the schools and the need to listen to students, who were primarily concerned that they were undereducated. 
There were skirmishes in a couple of the schools. There were no injuries. In some cases I think there was a gun involved. It was just unrest, as I saw, that was pretty much a result of what occurred in the year before. We had the riots the year before, following Martin Luther King's death. 
There was a lack of quality education, and the young people were beginning to recognize it, how far behind the minority school districts were in their testing. It was pretty much what we called the 'black belt' at that time, that went from a portion of <a href="/topics/Long_Beach">Long Beach</a> to <a href="/topics/Freeport">Freeport</a> and Hempstead and all the way up to Glen Cove. That's where minorities were confined to living at that time. Of course, it skipped places like <a href="/topics/Garden_City">Garden City</a>. If you were a Jew, a black, a Hispanic, you couldn't live in Garden City because Garden City had an unwritten covenant that you couldn't live there. It was not permitted, and it was pretty well known. Folks knew it. 
Some of these young people were for the first time awakened to the problems of minorities. And it impacted these youngsters. In recognition of that, we started a program in five school districts called Operation Get Ahead. 
The project still exists today. We went into the schools to support the students. It was therapeutic, it was educational and it was inspiring.

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Summer of '69: Lamar Cox

Once in a while, the Silent Majority was actually quite outspoken. 
During the summer of 1969, construction workers streamed into <a href="/topics/Manhattan">Manhattan</a> from <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> and the metro area for pro-war, pro-<a href="/topics/Nixon">Nixon</a> rallies. 
But by contrast, many Americans just quietly went about their lives that summer. For them, the <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> War, Woodstock, the Mets - did not loom as large as the private obligations of career and family. 
Scholars say 1969 was a key year for the conservative movement that would flower in the Reagan years and transform American politics. Conservative, traditional and religious groups all saw sharp membership increases. 
For Eugene O'Brien of Valley Stream, graduation in spring 1969 with an associate's degree in police science was the beginning of a life of public service. 
"That's when I became a volunteer fireman," O'Brien said. "Becoming a fireman was the most memorable thing that happened that summer, for me." 
O'Brien put his degree to work for a police equipment distributor and took the first steps in a career that would culminate with the position of Nassau County's director of security. 
For O'Brien and many others, jobs were a big worry that summer, as the U.S. and state economies constricted. Yet at the same time women, minorities, gays and other groups were demanding better pay, better jobs, better housing. The effects of <a href="/topics/Affirmative_Action">affirmative action</a> and civil-rights reform seemed more like waves than ripples. 
Black militants brandished rifles on the <a href="/topics/Cornell_University">Cornell University</a> campus. In June, radicals broke from Students for a Democratic Society, forming a violent offshoot known as the Weathermen. 
Psychedelic music, shoulder-length hair on men, sexual permissiveness and other trends left many Americans increasingly uncertain of their place in the world. They were the voters President <a href="/topics/Richard_Nixon">Richard Nixon</a> would reach out to as "the great silent majority of my fellow Americans." 
Heeding Nixon's appeal, in downtown Manhattan, the hard-hat demonstrations continued throughout 1969 and into the next year. They were ironworkers, bricklayers, plumbers, steamfitters. Pro-Nixon, anti-hippie and proud to show it. Some workers physically assaulted anti-war demonstrators - a violent outbreak that came to be known as the Hard Hat Riot. Mostly, though, the mass demonstrations were peaceable events. 
Beyond these highly visible pro-government rallies, most Americans were reeling from the speed and force of the changes and events the country faced. 
 YOUR VOICES 
 &gt;&gt; Josh Abbey &gt;&gt; Linda del Zio Zoffer

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Planting roots for Reagan

Alan Dershowitz, 70, the civil rights attorney, is a professor at the Harvard Law School. He had recently become the youngest full professor in the school's history when he took his family for a vacation on Fire Island in the summer of 1969. 
I was biking with my two young sons when we got to a fence. We couldn't go past it - it was a private community called Point O'Woods. They wouldn't let us bike through the other end of the island. That was very upsetting. 
I learned that no Jews were allowed. No blacks, either, and no Catholics. 
Soon after, I organized a protest. We threw ethnic food over a fence, tied to handmade parachutes. I went to a deli and got the gefilte fish. Others got bagels, black-eyed peas, corn bread. We sent messages asking the children in the community to tell their parents that discrimination is wrong. We had signs: 'Free the POWs,' which stood for 'Point O'Woods.' 
My friends and family had been active in the civil rights movement before that. Normally we were fighting other people's battles. This was the first time we were fighting our own battles. 
We saw this as part of a bigger issue. In <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> and in the north in general, communities were using restrictive covenants, screening for race and ethnic background. It was much more subtle than the South - it wasn't by public law, it was by private law. 
We also sued to have the U.S. Post Office remove its branch, because the post office cannot be part of a community that turns away people because of their race or ethnicity. We won that . . . . 
People from different ethnic groups can now live there. I ended up deciding not to summer there. I chose Martha's Vineyard. It was more open.

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Summer of '69: Alan Dershowitz

Linda del Zio Zoffer, 61, Young Republican Club member at <a href="/topics/Hofstra_University">Hofstra University</a> in 1969; ballet dancer, interior designer, Chapel Hill, N.C. 
I was a moderate. I have never been conservative. I believe in less government. I attended the Young Republican Club meetings, we met on campus. 
I did vote for <a href="/topics/Nixon">Nixon</a>. I was still hopeful at that time that he would make changes. He was a very smart man, but as with most politicians, he was also a very conflicted man. He said he would bring soldiers home, we were starting to pull out of <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>. The Vietnam War was the backdrop to everything. 
I know there were people who were hideously discriminated against but as a woman I never felt put upon. My father felt education for women was extremely important. I was fortunate to marry a man who very much was supportive of this, too. . . . 
At the time [he] was becoming a lieutenant in the Army and I felt I wanted to support him. He was in the ROTC and had to wear his uniform on campus a couple of days a week. No one ever was physically violent with him but people would come up to him and he would speak calmly and explain his position. Then they would shake hands and part company. 
I was a ballet dancer. I was dancing only a couple of hours a day that summer because I was planning my wedding. My wedding was my life. I was getting married Aug. 24 to my fiance, David. We're still married.

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Summer of '69: Linda del Zio Zoffer

Summer of '69

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A pair of beachgoers found "what appeared to be a human jawbone" while walking on Smith Point County Park in Shirley. NewsdayTV's Macy Egeland reports.

'Appeared to be a human jawbone'

The announcement comes after an exclusive Newsday investigation into allegations of animal neglect at the Holtsville Ecology Site and Animal Preserve. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn reports. 

'We were asked to take a look at it and that's what we'll do'

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A young brother and sister from Shoreham are thriving after receiving lifesaving heart transplants. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.

'It was a miracle'

For many Jets and Giants fans, frustration with the teams has outweighed their desire to attend the games. NewsdayTV's Carissa Kellman reports. 

'It's a little bit discouraging'

Luigi Mangione, 26, pleaded not guilty Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court to federal murder and stalking charges. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

Mangione pleads not guilty

Frank Agoglia, a WW2 vet who jumped behind enemy lines on D-Day, recieved the French Legion of Honor. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports. 

'We owe you our freedom'

Shoppers braved the cold weather in Huntington on Sunday to get last-minute Christmas gifts. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.

'One more thing and then we're going home'

A court order will allow more than 300 residents at Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation to stay there, for now, after they faced evacuation threats earlier this week.

Judge issues temporary restraining order for residents of Woodbury nursing home

Gilgo Beach Task Force investigators say accused Gilgo killer Rex Heuermann exhibited a "persistent interest" in the case before his arrest. Newsday Suffolk County Courts Reporter Grant Parpan has the story.

'He saved a newspaper article from 30 years before his arrest'

Luigi Mangione landed at MacArthur Airport on his way to New York City to face murder charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson after waiving extradition Thursday. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

Luigi Mangione ordered held without bail in NYC

Nassau officials are seeking federal authority to ticket drone operators or take the devices down. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

'We also want federal legislation that would allow us to issue a federal summons'

Dylan Martini of Wantagh said he was honored to win Newsday's Thorp Award, given out at Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury Monday.

'It's a great shock'

A judge is considering a request by the New York Attorney General's Office for a temporary restraining order to block an "emergency evacuation" of a Woodbury nursing home. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

Judge's decision expected Friday

Michael Koutsoubis bought 10 acres of Manorville in the 1980s, which he turned into his home and his Christmas tree farm. Newsday real estate reporter Arielle Dollinger gets a tour of the property.

Christmas tree farmer: 'This is my happy'

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