New generation stepping up

By Roberta Stauffer - 10/19/2008

In terms of wake-up calls that time is on the march, gray hairs and bifocals pale in comparison to realizing that the front- running candidate to become the next president of the United States graduated from high school the same year as you did.

Yep, Barack Obama and I and a whole lot of others hail from the class of 1979. His alma mater is Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii, and mine, good old Butte High.

A classmate of his lived on the same floor as I did in Campion Hall freshman year at Seattle University. I didn't know her well, but Lisa, an S.U. friend from Hawaii I'm still in touch with, said Cory remembers "Barry" as being "nice, amiable, smart, athletic, a regular guy." My friend Lisa went to rival school Kamehameha High, and although she didn't know Obama, she remembers seeing him around at football games and other activities.

Like Lisa and Cory, Obama headed to the mainland after high school, starting out at Occidental College in Los Angeles and later transferring to Columbia University in New York City.

A few of the collective experiences that all of us college students shared back then include Ronald Reagan winning the first presidential election in which we were eligible to vote — fall quarter of our sophomore year; John Lennon of the Beatles assassinated just barely a month later. Spring quarter that same year was marked by an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.

The pro-life/pro-choice debate was as heated as ever on college campuses, and other hot topics were the nuclear arms race and pressuring college administrations to divest from South Africa because of apartheid.

Obama was active on that issue. An article in the March 31 issue of Newsweek told of a powerful speech he had made during a campus rally at Occidental. "He had this booming voice," a friend recalled for the article, "but he also had this commanding presence." We did research for our assignments back then the old-fashioned way: consulting card catalogs and periodicals' guides in libraries and then combing tall shelves for thick volumes. We cranked out our papers on electric type- writers, after pretty well mapping them out ahead of time in longhand. "Cut and paste" literally meant cutting paragraphs out and taping them over the originals to replace sections that had to be rewritten.

Memories like that do tend to make one feel old, given how different the research and writing process is now with the Internet and computers.

And when it was time to play, we rocked out to the likes of Supertramp, Styx, Little River Band, Journey, Bruce "the Boss" Springsteen, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, and, of course, The Rolling Stones. I wonder: did Obama ever head to the TV lounge to check out the latest episode of Mork and Mindy?

It is hard to believe one of us Class of '79ers now stands on the verge of leading this country, but at the same time it feels entirely right. It's our turn. As the Washington Post said in its Friday endorsement of Obama for president, "We think he is the right man for a perilous moment." And closer to home are other examples of folks stepping up from the class of '79.

Fellow Butte High grad John Walsh, for one, is now adjutant general of the Montana National Guard. "He is the kind of leader and advocate for our men and women in uniform that we can all be proud of," Gov. Brian Schweitzer said when announcing the appointment last July. "Colonel Walsh has it all and I am honored to have him lead our National Guard." Another Butte High classmate, Cari "Lyn" McCarthy, is on the ballot for Butte-Silver Bow clerk and recorder this time around.

We children of the Seventies are coming into our own, eyes wide open, enriched by the hard-fought victories of previous generations and armed with a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-what-it-takes attitude. We may well have much to celebrate at our 30-year class reunions this summer. Then it will be back to work, reading glasses close at hand.

— Roberta (Bobbi) Stauffer is The Standard's opinion page editor. She may be reached at 496-5514 or by e-mail at roberta.stauffer@mtstandard.com.