Obituary of a Three-Century Man, Chapter 18 (of 19)
MLK, RFK, Woodstock, Watergate, and the Death of Crystalina
Jackson was preceded in death by . . . his wife, Crystalina, . . .
Events only got stranger after the devastating loss of Perry, one of the more than 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam. In 1968, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Francis Kennedy were murdered by lone gunmen.
King was killed on April 4 of that year, in Memphis, Tennessee. A few hours after King’s death, Presidential candidate Kennedy gave an impromptu speech wherein he called attention to the need to “replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.” He later added, “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”
Those sentiments made no impact on the minds and hearts of Sirhan Sirhan and whatever puppeteers may have been backing him and egging him on. Exactly two months after King’s murder, Kennedy won the California primary. In the early morning of the next day, June 5, shortly after addressing his supporters in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Sirhan shot Kennedy three times at point-blank range. Kennedy died the next day.
The next year, confused, disillusioned, and seeking to make sense of a world seemingly gone mad, some of Dan’s children dipped their bare feet into the counterculture, becoming, at least superficially, hippies. They dressed the part and adopted, to some degree, the political views of that group, but it was especially the music that drew them. And so, Willy (named for his great-grandfather) and his sister Jeannie (named for the Stephen Foster song—and she did have her mother’s light brown hair) made the trek in a Volkswagen Beetle to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair held in upstate New York in the Summer of ‘69. Their father Dan allowed them to go (Willy was 17 and Jeannie was 16) as long as Willy promised to look after his sister. Extracting such an assurance was unnecessary, though—Willy would never allow harm to come to his naive and trusting sister. Willy was like his recently bereaved aunt Audra in that way: a natural protector of his clan.
The brother and sister enjoyed much of the music at the festival, especially that by their local heroes Creedence Clearwater Revival (of northern California) and the British band Ten Years After. Willy and Jeannie were also entertained by the antics of their fellow concert-goers, but were more than a little shocked by some of the behavior they witnessed. The siblings remained aloof from the groups of people who were openly taking drugs; on returning home, Willy told friends that if he had a dollar for every time he and his sister were offered marijuana, he could retire and live the life of a lumber baron. Willy didn’t know if the offers stemmed from misguided friendliness or ulterior motives, but noticing the way some of the would-be-generous men looked at Jeannie, he tended to be suspicious of their intentions, for the most part. He was probably not wrong to be suspicious.
In 1972 the hippies, pseudo-hippies, wannabe-hippies, and quasi-hippies—who already distrusted government, calling the Governor of California “Ronald Ray-gun” and the President “Tricky Dick”—were not completely shocked when the Watergate break-in, which eventually led to Nixon’s resignation, occurred.
The Vietnam War (called, of course, the American War in Vietnam) finally concluded in 1973. The Calloways, and especially Perry’s mother Audra, wondered what had been gained from it that made up for the loss of her son and the 58,219 other American soldiers who lost their lives there. She felt for the other families, too, especially (being one) the mothers. When she thought about it, Audra even felt for the families of those killed on the other side. What would they have done to prevent their sons from going to war had they known how it would turn out? What could they have done?
As for Americans in general, the reasons for the war were not fully understood; many had not even known where Vietnam was when the conflict in that far-flung corner of the world escalated. In fact, when her nephew and niece went off to the hippie festival, Audra’s heart went with them. She felt sympathetic toward the anti-war movement of the hippies, and overlooked their wild looks and ways as much as she could due to her support of them in that endeavor. Audra was still too sad and enervated to do anything about it herself (such as organize, or even attend, protest rallies). She was, though, a silent protester. She had heard the words, “War, what is it good for?” in a song; she agreed wholeheartedly with the song’s self-response: Absolutely nuthin’!
Not long after Audra’s deep and brooding depression had finally lessened (for the most part, on most days) to a simple chronic aching sadness, her mother passed away. On September 30th, 1983, Crystalina Antoinette Calloway died peacefully while knitting in her chair beside the fireplace, with Jackson sitting nearby reading the newspaper. She was 82.
Now it was Jackson’s turn to be heartbroken. Crystal had been by his side for 62 1/2 years. What would he do now?
Chapter 1 can be read here.
Chapter 19 (Last) can be read here.