Early Tragedy in my Beach Town

My childhood was spent in Long Beach, Indiana, on the south shore of Lake Michigan. In the summer months, we occupied our time at the baseball field in the morning and the beach in the afternoon. Our home was on the beachfront. I had a brother and two sisters, and a half-sister through my father’s prior marriage. I am the oldest in my parents’ family. My older half-sister visited during the summers. The period I’m describing is from 1965 to 1973. The cultural vibe was intense. Hippie counterculture. Moon landings and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior. The failed assassination of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. The Cold War with Russia. The Space Race. Apollo 1, in which three astronauts burned up on the launch pad in January 1967. Yet, on July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon. A lot happened in the 1960s and early 1970s. Great music. Political movements, the first Earth Day. Multiple moon landings. Long Beach was a great…