The 1960s was a time full of youth. During the 1960’s we received the youngest president we’ve ever had. This was John F. Kennedy. John was also an Irish Catholic which gave him a similarity to Kathy Melvin and her family. He was the president from 1961-1963. His presidency was cut short in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. “he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas”(“John F. Kennedy.”).

The 1960s were a great time for tobacco companies, as almost everyone smoked and it was normal and even encouraged to do so. They advertised it a lot more than they do now. According to K. Michael Cummings, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Medical University of South Carolina, and Robert N. Proctor who was from the history department of Stanford University, “Smokers of Camels were even encouraged to smoke a cigarette between every course of a Thanksgiving meal--as an ‘aid to digestion’”(Cummings and Proctor). Even while financially struggling Kathy, just like many others of this time, managed to find some cigarettes to smoke as she got older.

Kathy Melvin was born May 28, 1958. Kathy grew up with a poor family and didn’t have much while growing up. She moved eleven times during her childhood. Having one full sister, a half-brother, and ten step-siblings, Kathy lived with thirteen siblings in total which was tough financially for her family.

On November 22, 1963, the United States of America was set into shock by an assassination that occurred in Dallas, Texas. Kathy remembers this day vividly despite only being six years old. She lived in St. Paul at the time with her thirteen siblings, mother, and father. Her mother was watching the television while Kathy and her sister, Patty, were playing on the ground in their living room. Kathy’s mother started crying out of nowhere. Kathy and Patty were both in awe as they saw their mother cry for the first time.

Kathy asked,  “Momma, what’s wrong?”

Her mother said nothing. She then gathered both Kathy and Patty up in her arms and hugged them. Kathy tried to see over her mother's shoulder to see what was so important on the TV to make her mother cry. The men on the TV were talking about their current president, which was John F. Kennedy.

Her mother finally said, “Somebody shot the president.”

Patty asked, “Why did someone do that?”

“I’m not sure sweetie.”

John F. Kennedy was dead. Kathy and many other curious Americans wondered why someone would do this. There was plenty of finger pointing while they wondered who could have done this crime. People still being fearful of the communist superpowers that we always seemed to be disagreeing with, had a quiet first judgment of whether it was the communists or not. John F. Kennedy and his family were admired throughout America. They later found out that it was Lee Harvey Oswald.   

Kathy grew up in a full household so she didn’t have much attention put onto her because her parents had to worry about thirteen kids. She started smoking at a young age but this wasn’t out of the ordinary for the time. She didn’t get to have much of a life during her teenage years as she got pregnant in tenth grade. Her first child was born on Kathy’s first day of eleventh grade while she was only sixteen.

Her parents persuaded her to keep the child instead of putting it into adoption. Kathy’s parents told her that they would help her out with the baby if she kept it. Kathy unfortunately never received the help that she was promised.

Kathy now advises people not to have kids until they are almost thirty. She wasn’t set up financially at the age of sixteen to even support herself, let alone a child. She did say a pro to having kids at a young age was that she was in better physical shape to chase them around when they ran away from her.

She later had two other children before the age of twenty-four. She ended up putting one of her children into adoption because she financially couldn’t handle having three kids at once.

Cory is his name and he was put into adoption when he was six years old. She was a single mom at this time trying to make ends meet financially living paycheck to paycheck. She didn’t know how to raise a boy and didn’t think that he had enough male role models in his current life.

She regrets that almost every day as her two daughters found their brother after thirty years of not seeing him and they went to see him. Kathy was not allowed to go with because her kid that she put into adoption did not want to see her. She knows that putting a kid up for adoption can be very hard on the kid but she thought that she was doing the right thing by giving him up to someone else that could financially take care of him.

Kathy still accomplished a great amount despite her obstacles in life. She created the IT department at IBM in Rochester, MN while she still had the kids in the house which changed her life and created jobs for many people. She now has sixteen grandchildren that she tries to be around as much as possible.

Works Cited

“7 Stunning Ways Life Was Different in the 1960s.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201409/7-stunning-ways-life-was-different-in-the-1960s.

Cummings, K. M., and R. N. Proctor. “The Changing Public Image of Smoking in the United States: 1964-2014.” Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, vol. 23, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 32–36., doi:10.1158/1055-9965.epi-13-0798.

“John F. Kennedy.” The White House, The United States Government, www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/john-f-kennedy/.

Kathy, Melvin. 30 Dec 2018