June 7, 1968

High school graduation day was June 6, 1968, fifty years ago.

The evening before graduation a few of us gathered with the intent of spending the night in sleeping bags on the Middleton High School lawn. All was going well. We were sitting around on sleeping bags likely telling off-color jokes as 17- and 18-year-olds are wont to do and listening to — what else — WISM.

It was the top 40 station here in Madison and vicinity. It was the best. Mornings started with Clyde Coffee; later there was Johnathan W. Little. The music was great. Early Beatles, Dave Clark Five, The Hollies, The Critters — the list goes on and on.

Then suddenly the music stopped. It was news crackling across the AM radio. Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed. We all sat stunned. Only a few years earlier when we were junior high students at Parkside Heights did we face the reality of a presidential assassination when John Kennedy was killed. Now it was his brother.

The rollicking sleep-out turned sullen. Some went home and a few of us found other places to camp out for the night.

The next morning a few of us went to Rennebohm’s for breakfast at the corner of University and Park Street in Middleton. On the way in someone bought a newspaper — the Wisconsin State Journal. The banner headline in at least a 216-point gothic was KENNEDY KILLED.

The group of us — five or six as I recall — were at a front corner booth dining area. We were likely boisterous as kids on graduation day are wont to be as well… One of us was reading an inside page of the paper, probably the jump of the lede story, such that the large headline was visible to others in the area.

A woman rose from her seat a booth or two away, approached our table and demanded “What are you kids doing with that old newspaper?” 

“Not an old newspaper; it’s this morning’s,” one of us said. She bent to look, read the dateline and visibly stumbled backward. She looked at each of us around the table, then silently returned to her table. A murmur made it’s way around the room. Others rose and came to our table to stare at the headline, then silently walk away.

The graduation ceremony that evening was solemn.