On this day in 1967, I was preparing to take the written and road tests for my first driver’s license. Several members of the Senior Class at The Dalles High School, including a few of my friends, were enlisting for military service in hopes of finding a better assignment than they would as draftees as the war in Vietnam raged.

There had been a demonstration that year in my school, which included a student walk out and sit in, but it wasn’t about issues of war and peace. A student publication had been banned from campus, and its editors suspended from school, for including articles critical of the Principal and school board policies.