Down Wilshire Blvd.

I graduated from Belmont High School, in Los Angeles, in June 1967 and was to start at UCLA in the fall. I bought a used car, got a boxboy job at a supermarket, took once class at LACC (to get it out of the way), and spent much of the summer dating the girl with whom I had gone to the prom. I had decided already, sometime in my last year of high school, that I was against the war in Vietnam, but had not thought of doing anything about it. Then, on a Sunday in late summer, between the end of my LACC class and the beginning of classes at UCLA, I heard an announcement on the radio of an antiwar march down Wilshire Blvd. We lived three blocks from Wilshire and the entire route was within easy walking distance from home. This made it a rather simple matter for me to join in. The prospect excited me, and I tossed the idea around in my mind for a couple of hours before deciding to walk up to the assembling point. Thousands of people had gathered. Some were preparing to march behind banners of a political party or organization, others had signs to hand out. It seems I had already made the decision to march by going that far; when the march began, I found a place in it and marched down Wilshire from just east of Western Avenue to LaFayette Park. I imagined myself quite daring, though there was probably little chance of danger. The one point in the march I do remember is when we passed Vermont Avenue and I saw a couple of people I knew from church standing at the corner watching and shaking their head in disapproval. I felt then that, for the first time, I had publicly declared myself to be opposed to my government's war.

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