The year that I entered law school was a helluva year. 1969 was a year filled with rock concerts, race riots, anti-war demonstrations, and other notable events. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for the assassination of RFK. The massacre of Vietnamese civilians occurred at My Lai. Teddy Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident at Chappaquiddick where Mary Jo Kopechne died. The Manson family committed the Tate-LaBianca murders. The Jets beat the Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III.
“Sesame Street” premiered on PBS. So did Richard Nixon, who was inaugurated on Jan 20. Millions protested the Vietnam war all over the country in 1969, the year the U.S. population reached 200 million. The Woodstock Music & Art Fair took place on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate New York.
My wife and I had gotten married the year before, another tumultuous year. The times were incredible, filled with drugs and uncertainty. We listened to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Doors.

I figured out that law school was the opposite of sex: even when it’s good it’s lousy. Because I was vociferously anti-war in a class of conservative rightists, one day I found scrawled on the bathroom wall in the law school that I was a Commie. I published an anonymous law school newsletter making fun of the pretentious law review and the law professors.
We entered the Seventies with a future of unknowns but at least we survived 1969.