Forty years ago today, the Hackwhackers were moving back into student housing in Madison, Wisconsin, when the report came over the radio that earlier in the morning a bomb had gone off at the University of Wisconsin's Sterling Hall, killing a 33-year old scientist. The target of the bombers was the Army Math Research Center and the scientist was Robert Fassnacht. The places and names of the people involved in the bombing (David Fine, Dwight Armstrong, Karl Armstrong and Leo Burt) are etched in the memory of what would be our last year at the UW. Only Leo Burt remains at large to this day (assuming he's still alive). The bombing cast a pall on the Wisconsin campus, as had the shootings at Kent State in May the same year.
It seems like such a long time ago, more than 40 years, more like a lifetime.
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I visited with a UW student friend of mine and her room-mate sometime in 1969. The apartment was near the Krogers store. Living in the apartment above the two young women was a UW prof said to be the mentor of student radicals. In the fog of memory, I mistakenly associated the New Year's Gang bombings with that year. I participated in numerous demonstrations in those times in NYC, at Fort Dix, NJ, and New Haven. Tear gas at Yale and also the Boulevard Saint Michel in 1968 where I watched the French students throw cobblestones at the heavily armed Parisian police. The Chicago convention riots and the Soviet crackdown in Prague also occurred while I was in France. All of that WAS a lifetime ago.
Thanks so much for your comment. Your experiences seemed far richer and far flung than ours in the late '60s. Glad you made the journey with us, and follow our modest blog.
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