There was no year like 1968. Draft calls summoned young men to fight in Vietnam alongside 500,000 troops already there. President Johnson opted not to seek re-election rather than face anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April, cities exploded. Bill Armstrong, a reporter for The Daily Kent Stater, covered the primary campaigns of Sen. Kennedy and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, worked at the Republican National Convention, and then traveled throughout Ohio with the presidential campaigns of Hubert H. Humphrey, George C. Wallace and Richard M. Nixon. Ohio was a battleground state where candidates argued over the issues of law-and-order, civil rights and peace. Meanwhile, a youthful band of New Left revolutionaries were creating demonstrations that alarmed the country. After disrupting Nixon's Inauguration, they turned their attention to fomenting campus upheaval, especially at Kent State University. Congress held hearings to learn who was behind all this. The author observed these activities first-hand. My '68 is his personal reflection on an extraordinary year, told with keen insight and self-deprecating humor in a way that puts the times in context. Everyone who lived through 1968 and its aftermaths will identify with this narrative.
About the Author: William G. Armstrong Jr. graduated from Kent State University in 1970 with a degree in political science and a minor in journalism. He is a former reporter for The Associated Press, aide to two Cabinet officers in Washing-ton, D.C., assistant dean of the New York University Graduate School of Business and for 12 years was a securities broker on Wall Street. He be-came an executive with for two leading independent public relations firms in New York City. He served as a U.S. Navy public affairs officer for 30 years, retiring with the rank of captain. He has written numerous articles, speeches and tidbits, as well as several specialty books, including Business, Media and the Law: The Troubled Confluence, a primer for business executives, and Just Wind: Tales of Two Pilots Under Pressure, about long-distance scientific ballooning. With his wife Clarinda Higgins, he coauthored Against the Current: How Albert Schweitzer Inspired a Young Man's Journey. He serves on several non-profit boards and lives in Fairfield County, Connecticut.