Sharing My Story

The early sixties was filled with confrontations
between the the West and the Communist
East. It seems as if one happened right
after the other. The building of the
Berlin Wall (with American and Soviet
tanks staring each other down in the
German capital), the wars in central Africa,
the Bay of Pigs invasion fiansco and the
Cuban Missile crisis.

The October 1962 crisis over the Soviet
missiles in Cuba was a tense and
frightening experience.
Some of my school mates were actually
scared of a nuclear war happening.
At the time I didn’t think it was possible
but in later years as details became
known it does seem as if we came
close to nuclear war.

We were told that President Kennedy
cancelled a late trip to the Seattle World’s Fair
in order to deal with the crisis.
At the time I was a little disappointed
but I realized he had his priorities
in the right place.