1985: An Odd Time for Everyday Anniveraries

What an odd year, this 1985, as memory and the media came to celebrate more anniversaries than Bertrand Russell had birthdays, than Tolstoi had characters. Behaviorists will want to examine this most commemorative time, when looking over-the-shoulder sometimes seemed simpler than facing current realities.

Consider only a few of the events serving as punctuation marks for the period, all of them attended by major stories in print or by film at 11:

January celebrated a quarter-century of Sun City, the once-novel system for safely storing older citizens--or freeing them to be among themselves, depending on your point of view. January also honored the 110th birthday of the late Albert Schweitzer, a controversial man who used old age in the service of others.

A need to find historical anchors in a time of drift obviously has to do with 1985’s old-time exploration. Since many of the events had happy endings and others were merely happy for having ended, anniversaries become a proof of the world having survived to be able to celebrate.

February was famous for the 40th anniversaries of Iwo Jima, a wartime battle, and the Yalta conference, a peaceful battle among Allies for postwar power.

The year’s celebrations have most to do with World War II. People used to commemorate by 10s, 25s, 50s and 100s. Now, the reason for making 40 important, rather than the rounder 50, must be a matter of acknowledging the participants while so many are still among us.

March : The Selma marches were 20 years old, an exclamation mark of protest almost separating the days of peaceful civil rights demonstrations from the urban uprisings to come. More serene, J.S. Bach would have been 300 years old.

Perhaps the world wasn’t made safe for democracy in 1945 any more than it was made safe in 1918, but civilization was at least preserved for two more generations. And Bach, the German who never traveled outside Germany, was one of our most civilizing forces.

April, 40 years ago, was when the Soviet and U.S. forces met at the Elbe River; the American handshakes and the Russian bear hugs were real enough for that moment. Then, 10 years ago, in April, Saigon fell--along with Americans’ sense of invincibility. There have been almost as many books about the localized Vietnamese experience as about the nearly universal agony of World War II; ours was a nation unready for retreat and wholly unprepared for arguing the merits or evils of a war in progress. The lessons from a decade ago are yet to be agreed upon; the social lesions are yet to heal.

Vietnam was television’s first major war and we haven’t ended arguments about whether bringing war into the family room produced the fury for a peace movement or whether the editing--tuning down battle sound, playing down battle blood--insulated Americans from the full horror. This year, discussions of nuclear winter suggest that Vietnam could also be television’s last major war.

May was nature’s month: Five years ago St. Helen’s, the mountain that moved men, was a reminder that the earth has convulsions all its own; 15 years ago, Americans declared Earth Day as a springtime for paying proper natural respects. But 40 years ago, in May, was also V-E Day; in 1985, springtime for Bitburg, a cemetery in Germany, began as a commemorative act and wound up in calumny--fresh proof of our capacity to pick the wrong place at the right time.

June , 1945, was when 50 nations signed the United Nations charter in San Francisco, committing their countries to the ideal of world peace. In 1945, Europe was at peace for the first time in nearly a decade. The Western World could begin digging out and the Marshall Plan, once described by Winston Churchill as a most unsordid act, would turn digging out into building up.

July : Medicare was 20 years old, an important acknowledgment of brothers’ and sisters’ keeping; and the Women’s Decade was 10 years old, an important announcement of sisters’ aspirations. Battles about healthism and sexism are still in process; no one cures physical ills in two decades or social ills in half that time.

And by July, contemporary compression accelerated; we began commemorating yesterday, including the first anniversary of the superb 1984 Olympics--grand physical huff, legitimate local puff.

August was a summer full of previous summers. Social Security turned 50, not quite healthy, a controversy in middle age, but a fixture of society. The atom bomb and the atomic age first fell on Hiroshima 40 years ago. V-J Day followed almost immediately. But right after the bombs dropped, the early predictions for a nuclear world had more to do with future energy than present anguish. Many of us are old enough to remember that emotions of relief, followed by promises of abundance, were of more immediate moment than the horror of what happened in two faraway Japanese cities. We have spent the following 40 years in a form of mourning, still waiting for the dawn of unlimited energy, meanwhile worrying about ultimate annihilation.

Watts, in August, 1965, in Los Angeles, was burned into summer memory and became the name as well as the place, for all the fires built on unfulfilled expectations. And only five years ago, in August, in Poland, Solidarity was a similar shriek for attention, for a form of liberation.

September was when Hoover Dam, a peaceful monument to energy, became 50 years old. And Greta Garbo, a monument to privacy, was 80, proving that journalists celebrate even when the guest of honor doesn’t want a party.

In September, the entertainment world was also noting the 30th anniversary of James Dean’s death, not his birthday, suggesting another new symptom of our times--marking the tragic moment of tragic figures, and selling souvenirs for the occasion. How many world figures, other than religious leaders, have heretofore been celebrated upon the anniversaries of their death?

October: Public grumping attended OPEC’s 25th birthday party, for that unruly amalgam of oil nations that would later pump so little pleasure into our lives. Peanuts was 35 years old, an occasion for recognizing security blankets in a world short of security. And people were preparing themselves for the World Series; it used to be celebrated in September before all seasons became extended. During the climactic, regular season series between the California Angels and the Kansas City Royals, a game was interrupted after journeyman catcher Jim Sundberg singled. That was his 1,300th hit and the management wanted him to have the ball. I understand an ovation for Rod Carew’s 3,000th hit, but 1,300 for Sundberg? The American pastime is the greatest American example of marking mini-milestones.

The computer helps store excuses for commemoration, flashing signals beyond the ordinary recollection of ordinary citizens. To an extent not yet measured, we often march backward to the beat of the memory drum.

November : The first elected president of the Philippines, Manuel Luis Quezon, was inaugurated 50 years ago, a major forward move on the way to independence for a one-time U.S. colony. And in December , 20 years ago, Ferdinand Marcos was elected president of the Philippines, following a virulent, violent campaign. This winter, Americans and Filipinos continue to argue about Marcos, the president who made autonomy into an autocracy.

This remarkable year makes one last point. Continuity, in the most celebratory month of all, remains a mammoth effort--neither a given nor a gift.