A world, and their lives, in transition

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 Vietnam, 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.

Daniel O'Connell'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."

The Class of 1969 on Long Island 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 East Moriches, who went to Brentwood 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 Deltona, Fla. "The end of one generation, the beginning of a whole new generation."

While 1969 is synonymous with Woodstock 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."

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