Interview

 

Q: What is your full name?

A: Stuart Alan Saraquse

Q: When were you born?

A: April 26, 1955

Q: Where were you born?

A: I was born in Oak Park, Michigan, just outside of Detroit.

Q: Do you remember where you were when Pres. John F Kennedy was assassinated?

A: I believe that I was in first grade, in class when the announcement came over the intercom. I can’t remember my teachers name but she was very beautiful and I had a crush on her. I think every guy in that first grade class had a crush on her. The thing I remember most was that she was crying and I was wondering what I could do to help her.

Q: Do you remember how you felt about it at that time?

I don’t know if I felt that much about it at the time. I don’t recall my parents discussing anything about it but I do remember having the TV on when I came home that day and seeing the announcement replayed over and over again. I know that a lot of adults were feeling sad but I don’t think I was feeling sad because I didn’t really understand the scope of it.

Q: Do you remember where you were when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed?

A: Again, I was made aware of his assassination when they cut into the local news on TV and made the announcement. I remember my parents looking at each other. They didn’t say anything to us because back in those days you left those kind of things to the teachers.

Q: Did you understand the significance of these events?

A: I did not understand the significance of that assassination even though I was almost 13. I paid pretty close attention to that news report and although I didn’t understand the real significance I did know that somebody very important like the president had been killed.

Q: What do you remember from your childhood? 

A: I would say that I felt I was living a great life back then when I was a kid. Things I remember like getting together with all the neighborhood kids and playing games or talking and riding our bicycles around. I remember going to the store to get candy and only having maybe a nickel or dime in my pocket – but that was all you really needed. I mean it was kind of like a magical time like when you watch Happy Days or something. It was a time for kids to be out in the streets until it started getting dark. No one was afraid of anything.  There wasn’t anything to be afraid of and you were always either on the streets in your neighborhood or one of the friends houses. I mean moms in those days didn’t work and they took care of everything. They took care of everything as far as feeding whoever was at the house and keeping track of them. I remember the corded phone and having my mom call up Tom’s mom or Bill’s mom and saying “your kids are here”. I mean it was really simple; it was like there were play dates going on every day and nobody supervised the kids. We didn’t need supervision. We didn’t know how to do anything wrong back then. 

Q: What age were you when the Vietnam War started?

A: I think I became aware of the Vietnam War when I started to pay attention to the weekly numbers of American casualties and for some crazy, weird reason that caught my attention and brought it home that there were people dying in Vietnam. I remember becoming aware of the fact that these people who were dying were only a few years older than I was. I remember worrying about having to go to Vietnam and deciding very certainly that I would not go fight for this country in Vietnam and I would go to Canada and be a conscientious objector.

Q: You were born in 1955 which made you 10 years old in 1965. Did you have any early exposure to the hippies and the antiwar movement?

A: Of course my earliest recollection of hippies and the the mod scene and all that was the music, and the music brought it into everybody’s life and “it’s 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for!” I mean I became a total liberal based upon the music that I was listening to. I remember that Woodstock, and all the antiwar stuff and nobody was proud of the Army and the Navy and fighting. No one understood why we were really over there only that we were and that we shouldn’t be. I think what made the biggest impression on me were the antiwar songs and the long hair and peace signs. I remember going to San Francisco with my parents and we would go down there and go to dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf at one of the places because we all loved seafood. I remember us going to the Haight-Ashbury district and seeing people out on the street sitting around on blankets and anti-war signs and the lots of long hair,and the beautiful girls running around with flowers in their hair.

Q: When you were in elementary school where you exposed it all to racism?

A: The elementary school that I went to was more black than white. But my earliest exposure to racism was my father who was, in his own way, very racist. He did not believe in equality of all people. Almost until the day he died he was a racist through and through. I would get into arguments with him about hate and racism and I remember that my motto at the time was ‘the only thing I was prejudiced against was prejudice.’

Q: Do you recall what your general feeling was about the Vietnam war?

A: Once I became aware of the war and what everybody was saying about it I grew very negative towards it and also toward the government. I thought it was just turning its war machine on because there was money to be made from it and all of these things I got from listening to music and watching the news and just becoming more and more antiwar as a result of it. Only now, so many years later, do I appreciate the sacrifice they were and are making for us at home.