THOUGHTS FROM THE DESK OF THE XO

Then time in the form of years, decades and even a new millennium began to answer the question. During the remainder of the Nineteen-sixties, one never looked back on the events of the earlier portions of the decade. The events of entering college, along with marriage and family, and joining the work force to begin, what seemed to be, the long and endless journey of life occupied a person's thoughts. Maybe there was an occasional glance back when vacationing and passing by a navy base, where for a few moments certain things were recalled and mentioned to the family. Alternatively, there was the prolonged stare while watching a ship head out to sea, which would momentarily bring back images of the past. Most recently, the constant news media coverage of our country's military involvement world wide, over the last decade, has spawned a latent interest in the events of the early Nineteen-sixties.

However, for some reason, an urge to more actively retrieve and identify what, if any, significant world events took place during an individual's first few years of adulthood came forth! Were the early Sixties and late Fifties a serene period in our nation's history, where the only concerns kids had were the thickness of their chocolate malt and how much wave-set to put on their hair?

Are the current events in our nation's history more significant? Is the current generation of young adults deluged with seemingly more problems on a global scale than previous generations? A popular song heard on the radio recently, composed by a musician/song writer, who originally was studying to be a history teacher, answered part of the question. The title of the song is "Don't Blame Us The World's Been Burning Since It's Been Turning. The theme of the song was geared to the present generation believing that today's problems are more stressful and complicated than those encountered by the youth that grew-up in the Fifties and early Sixties, the Beaver Cleaver generation.

Thus began my journey to try to make contact with those first significant events of a young man's entry into adult life, the military and his relevant place in the time-line of historical events. The following pages will take the Internet surfer on a journey launched by the advent of the home personal computer and the World Wide Web of the Internet, as follows: