Woodstock: Tom Ackerson

Tom Ackerson

63, Speonk. Contractor.

The most important thing to me was not actually the music. It was the experience of being with people who had such a great feeling - it was like for the first time you could see where large groups of people could get together and not create any hassles for themselves.

It was a very - I don't want to use any touchy-feely words like sharing - but people were sharing. Some people had food and others did not.

The music was all over. It was daytime and it was nighttime. It didn't seem like it would stop. And yet for me the experience . . . it didn't just end there. The experience lasted not only for days afterward, not only for months, but for years thereafter. And many people that I've talked to that were at Woodstock, most have that same experience that changed their lives, that changed the way they felt about people. It changed, to some degree, the way they thought. And that experience has stayed with them. And it has certainly stayed with me.