The ’60s were a decade of rebellion and fighting for freedom in every respect of the word. My mother was changed by this decade; she has said that the ’60s shaped who she was to become and who she is now. The decade provided the music soundtrack to her life, as well as a new wardrobe and a new attitude. “I haven’t changed that much since then, and my opinions still reflect the mind-set of the times. I am very proud to say that I am a child of the ’60s.”
Evelyn Margaret Vlacich was born on January 8, 1951, in Margaret Hague Hospital in Jersey City. The hospital was named for Mayor Frank Hague’s daughter. Mayor Hague was part of the Democratic political machine that ran Jersey City at the time. “He would walk through the hospital with a white glove on, and if he found one speck of dust the whole floor would have to be shut down and cleaned again till it was spotless.” In the year 1960, my mother turned 9. She was a small one with long blond hair and green eyes. Before her ninth birthday Evelyn lost her father, who was the biggest influence in Evelyn’s life. She loved him very much and became very depressed after his death.
After that my mom became immersed in music, especially Beatles’ music. “The first song I heard was on the station WMCA, “The Good Guys”—an AM station because we were all still listening to AM then—and the DJ played “She Loves You (yeah, yeah, yeah).” Paul McCartney was her favorite. “If only he had met me first instead of Linda,” she always says with a smile. The Beatles offered an outlet for all the grief from her father’s death as well as providing some really good music to help ease the hardship of adolescence.
The new genres of music developing in the ’60s were what completely separated the ’50s from the ’60s, according to my mother. In her opinion, parents didn’t blame the music for changing the youth of America. Instead, parents welcomed this change because rock and roll was more known, and it didn’t cause a growing fear that young women would start wearing short skirts or that young men would learn to play the guitar instead of going to college. “My mother would ask me and my sister which new records we wanted from the store, and then she would go and buy them from the supermarket because back then records only cost 59 cents.”
Although my mother may not like the music of the newest generation, she has never discouraged any one of her children from listening to it. She feels that music can heal the soul and strengthen the mind, something she learned from her own experiences with the Beatles and Neil Young and Crazy Horse and others.
Evelyn was maturing in an era of civil chaos, and the feminist movement was taking flight and changing women’s perspectives. When she started high school she was taking classes to graduate with a college preparatory diploma. She wanted to become somebody, to be successful.
When Evelyn asked for advice about her future the best advice her guidance counselor at Dickinson High School could give her was to hand her two business cards for insurance firms in New York City. She went to apply for work in New York but only because she would not be able to fund her college education without working at least part-time. “Not working wasn’t even an option. I needed money and working provided me with it. After I started working I was able to move out on my own and get an apartment and buy a dog. It made me happy to take care of myself.”
My mother always wanted to go to college though. She never wanted to be a “boring,” stay-at-home mother. “I wanted to do something for people, not just be a faceless nobody.” Growing up while women all over the country were fighting for equal rights gave my mother the courage to go for her dreams. In high school, my mother’s aspirations to be successful included being a lawyer, who wouldn’t be costly representation, and then becoming the first woman Democratic president.
She vowed to change the nation for the better and stop all of the “oppression” against the students, blacks and women. “I felt sorry for all those people, and I felt that they needed a break. Sometimes even to this day I know that when I get up in the morning, I can do everything I want because of the color of my skin, and some people can’t do that and that has always bothered me. It bothers me that in the 21st century we are still fighting the battles that were started in the ’60s and even before then.”
Evelyn was not exactly your quintessential “free-spirited” hippie, but she did have long hair, although it was always that long so technically she was in style before having long hair was the style. But she did believe in some of the same views as many young people at that time. Evelyn was against the war and pro bringing the troops home. She was against segregation and pro equal rights. She did not do drugs, even though her alma mater was one of the highest-ranking schools for drug trafficking, and weed was easily available. She did say that she tried marijuana once or twice in college at Jersey City State, and it was the most awful smelling and tasting thing in the entire world. Even if it wasn’t bad for you she would still not recommend “smoking the stuff.”
In response to the feminist movement, my mother refused to watch I Love Lucy and other shows that depicted “stupid” women because she felt that these shows and the actresses on them were degrading to all women. To this day my mother won’t watch television shows that show “weak” women because she believes that this “women-aren’t-equal-to-men mentality” will never change unless someone pushes the change into action.
On July 11 of 1968, Evelyn started working in the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, an insurance company located at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. “From my house in Jersey City I could see the Equitable insignia at the top of the building. It was lit up and it was a woman in a classic Greek costume. She had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. We would always call her the pizza lady because the shield looked like she was carrying a pizza. It was weird though that it was a woman. I never really thought about it but it’s interesting.”
Evelyn was never afraid for her safety in New York even though she was still very young and on her own in the city amid protests and riots going on all over the country. “Working in Rockefeller Center at the Equitable, I was in one of the safest parts of the city.” Plus the city offered much involving the cultural aspect of the ’60s. There were plenty of stores in the city for the “new age” woman, the woman who was “ready to take on the world and prove to men that we are the same, if not the better part of the human race.”
Buying her first pair of jeans was an experience for my mother because it was liberating for her to be able to “dress like a man.” “I bought my first pair of jeans—in a boy’s size because jeans had not yet come out in girls’ sizes—at a store called Teepee Town, an Indian store with tons of stuff from the North American Indian.” Teepee Town was located in the Port Authority bus terminal. “The jeans were dark blue with gold stripes, and after buying them I rarely wore skirts.”
Before the “jeans revolution,” women and young girls only wore skirts. This was her first step in joining the feminist movement because, in her opinion, she no longer had to do what was expected of girls. To her, girls in the ’50s were expected to be good, angelic beauties. In the ’60s, because of the hippies and the feminists, girls could “free” themselves from this persona and do as they pleased. That’s why my mother believed in the feminist movement. She believed that she was equal to men and that she could become president or whatever she wanted to be.
Jeans also represented a way for my mother to prove herself to the world. My mother was born a very pale blonde and has kept that color all her life. She was afraid that because of the perception that blondes were dumb and “just like the valley-girl image portrayed by movies” she would never be taken seriously as a woman or as a blonde. Buying jeans was my mother’s way of showing that looks weren’t everything. She tried to get people not to judge her, especially because of her hair color. This mentality has carried my mother from then to now. She still stresses it to her children. She doesn’t want her three daughters to be taken advantage of because of our hair color—my sisters and I are all blonde—or because of our gender.
My mother learned most of her ideas about women’s liberation from her own mother, who was very independent due to the loss of her husband when she was 35 and having to raise four kids on one income. My mother’s opinions about women’s liberation were also influenced by the movement itself. Seeing other women like herself going after their dreams inspired my mom to do the same.
When Woodstock happened in 1969, Evelyn was so excited to find out that two of her friends, two male friends, were willing to drive her there and back so she could see all the artists scheduled to perform in the three-day concert. Unfortunately, Evelyn’s boyfriend at the time was “uncomfortable” with the thought of Evelyn going out on her own with two young males accompanying her for three days. In spite of wanting to go, she stayed home. Music is a huge part of my mother’s life and missing this concert was a huge deal. Today, when music has changed drastically in style and content, she deeply regrets not going to Woodstock. Still, she doesn’t believe that not being able to go affected her thinking or actions then or now.
In the 21st century, my mother is a working-class wife and mother with three girls. She went to Jersey City State in 1974 to study history and continue on her path to becoming president. Last year she went back to college, enrolling at Montclair State and testing for her teaching certificates, which she passed with flying colors. Now at the age of 52, Evelyn feels that because of living through the ’60s she was more able to understand life and what was going on in the world. She could teach her children morals and how to be accepting of others, even if the color of their skin doesn’t necessarily match their own.
The atmosphere of the ’60s has profoundly affected my mother. She can tell anyone who asks exactly where she was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated or when our fellow Americans landed on the moon. My mother believes that music changed the way teenagers saw the world and the war, and that music was the reason for the antiwar protests because it reflected the views of college students.
“In the beginning of the war everyone essentially supported Americans being over in Vietnam. But eventually the draft was instated, and students didn’t believe it was fair that certain people were allowed to buy their way out of the war. The music began to reflect this thought, and as more musicians voiced their antiwar opinions in their songs, more people began to get angry that young American boys were fighting another country’s war.”
Music and adolescent rebellion changed my mother. The ’60s weren’t as chaotic to my mother as to most people, but the decade offered change and shaped her as a person. It also molded her to become Democratic and to fight for women’s rights, especially with her children’s interests at heart.
“I don’t want my children to lose out at being successful just because the man in charge says so.” And she will forever believe in the values that she recognized growing up as a child of the ’60s.
Kristen Perry is an Honors College student at Rutgers-Newark.
