Published: 12/1/2019 9:41:07 PM
Modified: 12/1/2019 9:41:05 PM
WEST LEBANON — The end of the 1960s were a turbulent time in the United States, as the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays in December 1969 attested.
With the war in Vietnam going badly, abroad and at home, the U.S. government changed its military draft procedure to a lottery system.
Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane became a number one single and one of the protest songs of the Vietnam War.
And the Rolling Stones held a concert at the Altamont speedway in California, where yet more deadly violence marred the image of the peace-loving decade.
In the Upper Valley, much of life proceeded as it often did, though perhaps a bit snowier than usual.
A late December storm dropped as much as 4 feet of snow on parts of Vermont, with the snowfall in Burlington for the month reaching 50 inches. And the Vermont governor, visiting family in Framingham, Mass., was snowbound there for two days.
But the Valley News also chronicled holiday rituals that endure. Cub Scouts in West Lebanon undertook a service project, wrapping handkerchiefs to give as presents to residents at the Grafton County Nursing Home.
A worker at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital spent her spare time shooing her husband out of the kitchen and making dozens of boxes of fudge and hard candy to be given to inmates at the County Farm and to patients at the Veterans Administration hospital in White River Junction.
And a local Santa Claus paid a visit to children in the Lebanon Head Start program, where administrators said volunteers were “desperately needed.”
There’s always a need. And in the Valley, almost always a good-hearted person to meet it.