The 6th day of the sixth month of year has shaped our lives long before we came together at Vanderbilt.
Sixty nine years ago today, June 6, 1944 was the invasion of Normandy, D-Day. It's the event that forever molded our current Western Civilization, ensuring the victorious outcome of the war in Europe for the Allies against Adolph Hilter and the Axis Powers. No doubt many of us had fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, perhaps even older brothers who landed and fought that day or later in the conflict. Some even gave their lives as a part of what has become known as "The Greatest Generation" of Americans.
While none of us in our Class was alive that day, we have learned and remember well what occurred on D-Day.
Courtesy of The History Channel, here's a brief look back.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPU4p7UQOtU
June 6 is also the day that shaped our lives a little more than a year before we came to Vanderbilt. It was early on the morning of June 6, 1968 when Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Robert Kennedy, fresh off his victory in the California primary election, was shot down while passing through a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles, CA. Much like the assassination of his brother, President John Kennedy five years earlier, the RFK murder is an event everyone in our generation remembers where they were and what they were doing when they learned about what happened.
As you can remember from watching the video below, 1968 was a year of great upheaval and violence in American politics. It was another end of innocence for our generation, much as the events of September 11, 2001 have been for our children....
http://www.history.com/videos/the-assassination-of-rfk#the-assassination-of-rfk
As members of the 1973 Centennial Class of Vanderbilt University, we have hold many things in common. But before many of us ever met, our lives were changed and shaped forever by the events of the Sixth of June.
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