Sunday, January 5, 2020
On Its Centennial Celebration
1908 to 2008
  

  
Click on everything underlined, all are linked to websites

Good Day Preppies,   
                                                                                               

Allow me to give tribute to our beloved University on its upcoming centennial celebration.  I have enclosed a document, representing the chronicles of our generation from our birth to the 1970's. This document is rich in pictures photos, pop songs and videos representing the period, just my version to celebrate the passage of that era. The "Chronicle 100 Years of Events" was used as a backdrop to reflect the mood of that time.
  
It was by chance, while researching about my old high school, when I noticed the class of 61 was not represented like other classes in the UPIS Alumni link. Researching other links to this class produced only a list of names of the graduates of '61 and nothing more. No news, or updates after 46 years, as if the whole class vanished into thin air. It dawned on me, to write this letter in order to encourage the possibility of connecting the class with each other, and why not? It may lead to responses, and that this may become the nucleus of links from respective members. That chance to connect should be gratifying enough, after counting almost 5 decades of absence. Letters and words put together in such endearing ways are worth more especially in these our so called autumn years. I just do not want this class to fade away into oblivion.

  
I started the decade as a junior at the University of the Philippines in fervent preparation as a cadet of the PMA. Temporary enrollment at MIT and then appointment to the cadet corps at the academy was the plan, however, my 20/40 eyesight failed the standards. I remember my tepid dedication to my new course ChE, passing was enough. I recall the loves, my only solace for past failures, the friends and stormy situations that I weathered through in High School. As in life surviving the cards you are dealt with, the unspoken pecking order among bigger classmates and the so called "in crowd" was the rule. That lone wolf streak that kept me apart was the pride in my family's heritage and that set me off against the teenage precepts of the day, further forming that stallwart pioneer spirit. Later when of age and after further studies, having ever spurred curiousity, just like my forefathers, aspired a life of adventure and Public Service. 

Our generation probably is the most interesting. We were born during extraordinary times, in the crucible of World War II, then in later years, the most changes and perhaps the last of the innocent generation. The years from 1943 to 1945 are considered to be the silent  (war babies) generation, between the so called hero and the baby boomer generations. My intent, to emphasize the war years, reflected my perception of this period that significantly impacted everybody. If not for the war and the turn of events, maybe we would not be even here. In truth, it is our trademark as war babies. How we and our parents survived the tribulations of that era was in itself phenomenal. However, bear with me, the later years will show the lighter side of our generation, and hopefully all can enjoy the chronicles and timeline of everyone in this segment of our life.. 

My goal to keep in touch with class 61 became foremost in my mind, from that moment. I left Rizal Hall after graduation without the good accord of a group known as the U-61. I hope to rekindle friendship, patch up rivalries and perhaps re live the heady days of High School. We have passed over 60 years of our life, we can make the class of 1961 closer, at least in spirit, and let ourselves be inspired, that we belong to this special group. I can not deny my deep feeling of warmth to this great school. Among the colleges that I have attended in the Philippines and in the USA during my academic life, my particular fondness is always with the University of the Philippines.  I and like every alumni of the U. P. Preparatory High School should be so proud of this University and the rich traditions that we represent.



Godspeed and Best Regards
ASC, P.E.  


                                                 
              
Preparatory School Class 1961




1908 NewAmericanUniversity in PI 
The University of the Philippines was established in 1908 as the American University of the Philippines by an act of the First Philippine Legislature Act No. 1870, otherwise known as the University Charter, specified the function of the University, which is to provide advanced instruction in literature, philosophy, the sciences, and arts, and to give professional and technical training.

The University began with the College of Fine Arts, the College of Liberal Arts, and the College of Medicine and Surgery occupying buildings distributed along Padre Faura (Ermita district) and R. Hidalgo (Quiapo district) in Manila as well as a School of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna.

 A few years after, the university opened the College of Law and the College of Engineering in Manila, as well as academic units under the College of Agriculture and Forestry in Los Baños.

It became necessary for U.P. to establish more academic programs, as well as to expand its facilities.
The Board of Regents approved the need to look for a larger site, and a 493-hectare lot was acquired by the university in Diliman, then a town under the province of Rizal. Construction of the new campus immediately began in 1939....Wikepedia
Ford's Model T
On 12 August, the first Model T Ford motor car rolled out of the factory in Detroit. Costing just $900, the Model T brought its maker, Henry Ford, one step closer to fulfilling his dream to manufacture a popular vehicle that everyone could afford.
The Model T owed its low cost to new techniques of mass production - breaking down the complex job of building a car into a succession of simple operations. The car was assembled so quickly that it was only in black, because black enamel was the only paint that dried fast enough.
Known affectionately as "Tin Lizzy", the Model T was an immediate success. 16.5 million Model Ts were found on the road in the next few years.
William Taft is US President
William "Big Bill" Taft retained the American presidency for the Republicans by defeating Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, by 7.7 million votes to 6.3 million. It was the third time that Bryan had run for presidency, setting an American record for political failure! He actually stood little chance against Taft, the favoured choice of the previous president, the combative but popular Theodore Roosevelt.
Taft's mild manners and conciliatory approach brought about change of political style to Washington. However, he was unable to honour his campaign pledge to lower protective tariffs, or to respond to public calls to conserve the natural resources of the US. Thus, his presidency split the Republican Party into conservative and progressive factions.
Terrible Earthquake in Italy
A devastating earthquake brought the Christmas season to a horrific end for the Sicilian city of Messina, Sicily, on 28 December. Around 80,000 citizens were killed, and the city itself had been almost completely razed to the ground.
Thousands more were believed to have perished in surrounding villages and on the mainland of Calabria. Martial law was declared as the scale of the disaster became known, and a massive international relief operation was mounted. The city's inhabitants were left dazed and homeless. Much-needed temporary shelter was set up and emergency supplies of food, clothing and medicine was brought in.
Europe's worst earthquake almost entirely destroyed Messina's heritage of ancient buildings. Along with many other medieval churches, the Messina cathedral already damaged by several previous earthquakes, was reduced to a pile of dust.











 1942   A gleam in your father's eyes were you 
 Universityof the PhilippinesClosed inWWII
During World War II, U.P. had to close most of its colleges except the Colleges of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Engineering. Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army occupied two Diliman campus buildings: the College of Liberal Arts Building (now Benitez Hall) and the Colleges of Law and Business Administration Building (now Malcolm Hall). After the war, the new Diliman buildings were devastated. U.P. President Bienvenido Gonzales sought a grant of Php13 million from the US-Philippines War Damage Commission. A massive rehabilitation and construction effort was executed by the university during the post war years. For the first time, an extensive Diliman campus master plan and map were created in 1949. The map created what became visions for Diliman’s expansion projects. More buildings were to be built across the Diliman campus’ landscape: the University Library (Gonzalez Hall), the College of Engineering (Melchor Hall), the Women's Residence Hall (now Kamia Residence Hall), the Conservatory of Music (Abelardo Hall), the Administration Building (Quezon Hall), and the U.P. President's Residence . Most colleges and administration offices were temporarily housed in huts and shelters made of sawali and galvanized iron...Wikepedia

By June 1942, the Japanese controlled most of the Pacific area (Corregidor Photos), Malaya. Parts of Burma and Thailand, Indo-China, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. However, the navies of America and Japan fought two epic battles in April and June that changed the course of World War II. Victories in the Coral Sea and at Midway Island shifted the advantage to the Allies in the Pacific.

  The four-day Battle of the Coral Sea started when the Americans decoded Japanese invasion plans for Port Moresby, New Guinea, and Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands. America sent a naval force to stop the Japanese troops. The enemy ships never met each other, but from May 2 through May 6, both fleets attacked each other with waves of fighter planes and bombers. The Japanese lost 70 planes and its light carrier Shoho. The American losses included 66 planes and the aircraft carrier Lexington, a vital oceangoing carrier. Although victorious in terms of ship tonnage sunk, Japan lost too many fighter pilots to continue with the invasions. Thus its southward advances were halted.
A month later, American triumphed again at Midway. Once again they became aware of the Japanese plans, and lay in wait for the huge fleet of 86 warship sent by Japan to attack the tiny island in the Pacific. On June 3, the Japanese launched an attack on the two westernmost Aleutian islands, Kiska and Attu (the only American soil to be occupied by the Japanese during the war), in order to the divert the Americans' attention. The next day, a swarm of Japanese carrier-launched planes bombed Midway. The Americans responded with three consecutive air attacks on the Japanese, each a failure. But on June 5, the Americans bombing raid sank three Japanese aircraft carriers. His fleet devastated, Japanese admiral Yamamoto retreated west. The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, a cruiser, 332 planes and 3500 lives; the Americans: one aircraft carrier, a destroyer, 147 planes and 307 lives.
Although the bloodiest battles of the Pacific were yet to come, the Japanese army never recovered from these defeats. 

 
Above Rizal Hall after the war

A photo of Guadalcanal from my travels in the Solomons in 2002 .........ASC    Guadalcanal Battle Film

A photo of Guadalcanal from my travels in the Solomons in 2002 .........ASC 
                                                                                                     



A typical church like this one in Tanay, Rizal where some parents  maybe  married and some classmates maybe baptized hastily during  World War II


                                      
                                                               Bataan Death March  April 1942     In March of 1942 U.S General Douglas MacArthur and president Quezon fled the country. The cruelty of the Japanese military occupation of the Philippines was very brutal an aspect of samurai barbarism.   The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino Defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9,1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March in which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at  camp O'Donell 10 days later.  
23
May 1942: After defending the island for nearly a month, American and Filipino soldiers surrender to Japanese invasion troops on Corregidor island, Philippines. This photograph was captured from the Japanese during Japan's three-year occupation. (AP Photo) 

 Bridge of Remagen, Germany 1944                          Pictures  Battle of Leyte Gulf October 1944 
2,000 ships, 4,000 landing craft and 11,000 airplanes were involved in the largest seaborne invasion
ever. Allied troops crossed the choppy English Channel toward Normandy on June 6, 1944, on Operation Overlord: the regaining of northern Europe after four years of Nazi occupation.

First planned for 1942, the landing had been repeatedly postponed, this time with a delay of 24-hours caused by the worst storm in a quarter century. D-Day (a term referring to the first day of any military operation, but now associated with this 1944 invasion) started with paratroop raids before sunrise. Minesweepers (ships equipped for detecting and removing sea mines) cleared the waters while warships and bombers fiercely attacked enemy positions. Pre-manuafactured floating harbours were moved into place.

At 6.30am, American, British and Canadian troops under General Montgomery began swarming from landing craft onto beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. After wading through the icy waves or charging towards land on amphibious
(able to travel on water and on land) tanks, the troops struggled past steel obstacles and barbed wired to recapture
the first patches of French soil.
At the end of the day, 155,000 men were onshore.   Landings and Battle of Leyte Gulf
 
While preparations for the large-scale landing was too massive to conceal, the Germans did not put up a good defence because of disputes between Hitler, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (overseer of military operations in France) and Runstedt (commander-in-chief in the west). They quarrelled over the probable invasion point and the best line of defence. When the attack came, Hitler took it as a diversionary tactic (an intentional distraction), and held back his forces for the "real" invasion. 
Resistance was strong only initially at Omaha Beach, with 3,000 Americans casualties on the first day of fighting. The Allied invaders quickly spread out along 100 miles of coastline. However, Normandy's Nazi-occupied cities were harder to regain. Cherbourg held out for ten gruelling days, while Caen held out more than a month.
By mid-August, the Allies had broken out Normandy, and were sweeping across France. The Low Countries (the low-lying countries between Germany and France – the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), and Germany itself, lay before them.


At the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General MacArthur was evacuated from the Philippines in March 1942. Given command of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific area, he directed the successful defense of southeastern New Guinea, and beginning later in 1942, the counteroffensive that ultimately swept the Japanese from the region, leading to his return to the Philippines with the October 1944 invasion of Leyte. Promoted to General of the Army shortly before the end of 1944, MacArthur subsequently oversaw the liberation of the rest of the Philippines. After Japan capitulated in August 1945 General MacArthur presided over the formal surrender ceremonies and, during the next five years, was responsible for demilitarizing the defeated nation and reforming its political and economic life.







Before sunrise, on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay set off from Tinian Island,
in the Marianas. Over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8.15am, it released one bomb. Instantly, 80,000 people died,
and most of Hiroshima was completely wiped out. President Harry S Truman told the American people:
"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima...
If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the sky the likes of which has
never been seen on this earth"

Two days after Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan (as agreed at the February
Yalta Conference between the big three – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria.
On August 10, America dropped a second atomic bomb, killing 40,000 in Nagasaki.
On August 14, Japan surrendered unconditionally. The following day, Emperor Hirohito addressed
his nation over the radio for the first time. Explaining that the enemy "has begun to employ a new
and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable," he announced Japan’s
acceptance of Allied terms. Thus ended World War II.


On September 2, aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, General MacArthur, the Allied
Supreme Commander, received the surrender documents.
The bloodiest conflict in history  ended with an even greater threat of inconceivable violence.
Humanity had obtained the power to destroy the entire world. Till today, debates continue,
as to the necessity of using nuclear weapons against Japan.


 
Legislative Bldg. Manila 1945    Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud        
  
 
Hiroshima 2002 at the Peace Park Ground Zero           
Japanese POW in Manila 1945                        Amazing American Hero  Audie L. Murphy
 
 
 



Having been stretched thin along the 700-mile Eastern Front, losing in the
Balkans, and encircled in Lithuania, the German forces fell. The Soviets quickly took Warsaw (Poland) and Lódz. Hitler withdrew from
the Ardennes (a wooded plateau in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France; the site of intense fighting in World Wars I and II)
on the Western Front and rushed to Budapest in hopes of holding Hungary. By February, some Soviet divisions stood only 40 miles from
Berlin.

On March 23, the Allies attacked across the Rhine River. The Canadian 1st Army trudged through the Netherlands, the British 2nd drove
to the Baltic Sea, and US forces fanned out from Magdeburg to the Czech and Austrian border. Oradour-Sur Glane
Meanwhile, the Soviet pressed on, wreaking revengeful atrocities and driving hordes of refugees before them. By mid-April, they had taken Vienna, Danzig, and Königsberg. On April 25, they met with the Americans – with toasts and embraces – on the Elbe River. Remains of Krefeld and Brandenburg



Berlin fell on May 2, Axis forces in Italy and Austria surrendered the same day. On May 4, five days after Hitler’s suicide, his counterparts in Germany, Holland and Denmark followed suit. And on May 7, in Reims, France, the German High Command (represented by German General Alfred Jodl and Admiral Hans Friedeburg) surrended unconditionally. Only in Czechoslovakia did fighting go on for a few more days. On May 8, five years and eight months after it started, the war in Europe was officially over.
In the following weeks, the Allies arrested every Nazi official they could find on war-crimes charges. Hitler’s dream of a Thousand-Year Reich (empire) lasted only 12 years.
Attempting to leave behind seven year carnage of the world war, ambassadors from 51 nations met in London on January 10, 1946, for the first session of the United Nations General Assembly. The UN was a body dedicated to preventing future global conflict, replacing the ineffective and discredited League of Nations.
The idea for a new international peace keeping organization was first raised in 1941 by President Roosevelt and Churchill, and was supported by the other Allies the following year, in the Declaration by United Nations. In the Moscow Declaration of 1943, China, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union affirmed the need to replace the League of Nations, and at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, diplomats from those four countries drew up a proposal. A charter was drawn                                                                    University of Santo Tomas
up by delegates from 50 nations and ratified (approved) later in the year. It called for a dominant body, a General Assembly of all members, as well as a "Security Council", composed of eleven members (five of them – China, France, Britain, the United States, and the USSR - permanent). The Security Council alone had authority to intervene in international disputes, only after full votes of support by its permanent members.
The Secretariat, led by the secretary general (the first was Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie, foreign minister of Norway’s wartime government-in-exile), carries out the UN’s businesses. At the invitation of the US Congress, the UN located permanently in New York City. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., using his family’s inexhaustible fortune, donated prime Manhattan real estates along the East River. By 1952, the main headquarters buildings were completed on the international land (owned by no country). Pictures of Corregidor below.

Published:
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by pediatrician Benjamin Spock. By 1990, his manual was in its sixth edition and had sold 40 million copies in 36 languages, making the doctor one of the most-read American author ever.



Mao Establishes People’s Republic
On January 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s resigned as president of China’s Nationalist government after his armies were defeated by the Communists when America stopped its aid. Ten days later, Mao Zedong’s Communist forces entered Beijing. By late autumn, the Chinese Communist Party occupied all the major Chinese cities, including Nanjing, the Nationalist capital. The Communists had won the civil war. On October 1, 1949, Mao announced the birth of the People’s Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the entrance to Beijing’s ancient imperial palace. He would be Chairman, Zhu De, military commander of all Communist forces, would be vice-chairman; Zhou Enlai, leading diplomat, would be premier and foreign minister.

Mao Zedong, the son of peasants, imagined a China run by the common people. His government promised free thought, speech, and religion, and equal rights for women. China was to be modelled after the USSR, built on socialized agriculture and state-run heavy industry. The USSR and other Soviet-bloc states immediately recognized the People’s Republic of China; neighbouring Burma and India and many other European countries followed within a few months, including Great Britain (but Mao rejected British recognition). The United States withheld diplomatic recognition, remaining loyal instead to Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan to re-establish his Nationalist government.
Domestic policies did not run smoothly. As many as a million people were killed in the violent clashes between landlords and tenants that came with widespread land reforms. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party was unpopular with the common people because it treated wealthy peasants better as it could not afford to alienate them. Quickly, Mao’s vision of a China run by the common people, became a China run by Mao.
 Ambush in The Hills           
In May of 1949, Mrs. Aurora Aragon Quezon  a well-loved figure in the Philippines,  the wife of the late Manuel Quezon, first President of the Philippines, was assassinated. She had long led a quiet, austere life devoted to charities and the rearing of her family. When the President died, she turned down the pension awarded her by the government, so that the money might be used for needier war widows and orphans. Even the Communist-led Hukbalahaps, who spread terror through the hills of Central Luzon, could find no word to say against Doña Aurora.
 
With her eldest daughter Maria Aurora ("Baby"), her younger daughter's husband and a handful of Filipino officials, Mrs. Quezon traveled by car from Manila to Baler, where she was to dedicate a memorial to her husband. Riding in a station wagon with her relatives and Major General Rafael Jalandoni, she led the party through the mountains northeast of Manila where the Huks are thickest. All her companions felt that there was no danger involved where Mrs. Quezon was concerned.

Then without warning, in a rocky cleft 88 airline miles northeast of Manila, the mountains were rent with the splat of machine-gun fire. Mayor Ponciano Bernardo of Quezon City stood up to shout, "Doña Aurora is in our party!" A slug from a Garand rifle brought him down.

More bullets riddled the station wagon. General Jalandoni threw himself in front of Mrs. Quezon and drew his revolver. A rifle butt slammed into his cheek, he fell unconscious. Before the police escort riding behind could open fire effectively, the attackers had seized what valuables they could and melted into the green hills. Soon afterward, General Jalandoni came to. About him were twelve dead, including the Philippines' first lady, her daughter, and her son-in-law, whose pregnant wife had stayed at home.

"I can't believe the Huks did it," said shocked President Elpidio Quirino, when he heard the news. "Mrs. Quezon was loved too much." Police assured Quirino that the Huks were responsible, all right. At Doña Aurora's funeral, the sobbing President placed a single flower on the grave of the widow. Then, over the Philippine radio, he called for an all-out campaign against the terrorists.

As a nine-day period of national mourning was declared, Filipino planes and government troops combed the mountains in search of the slayers. From his hideout, Huk Leader Luis Taruc issued a statement which would scarcely comfort or reassure the bereaved islanders. If, he said, his own investigation revealed "a breach of Hukbalahap iron discipline," punishment of the guilty party would be carried out swiftly.



education  in  the  50's top hits           


Before dawn on June 25, 1950, the Soviet-equipped North Korean People’s Army into the Republic of South Korea. Two days later, after an emergency session of the Security Council (which the Soviets voluntarily did not attend), the United Nations invited its members to help South Korea against the invasion. President Truman immediately involved US air and naval forces, and added ground troops a few days later.
The Korean War was the first ever "police action" to taken by the UN, however more importantly, it was a symbol of the Cold War: In a remote land, the forces of democracy (from US) would come up against the Communists (Soviet Union, with Communist China support). Despite the fact that there was never a formal declaration of war, the conflict escalated to a point where 20 nations were involved.
In the first weeks of war, the North Korean People’s Army steamrolled across South Korea, capturing the country’s port city, Inchon, and its capital, Seoul. They put pressure on the UN beachhead (an area in hostile territory that has been occupied and is held for further troops and supplies) at Pusan, on the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula.
Then General Douglas MacArthur, the 70-year-old World War II hero, was named supreme commander of UN forces. He executed a dramatic landing at Inchon, and recaptured Seoul in September. The United States launched a new goal: the unification of Korea. In October, UN troops invaded North Korea, took its capital, Pyongyang, and rolled on towards the Chinese border.                         Espirito Santo Church in my Parochial School ESPS


The move spurred on China to send in 180,000 of its own troops. A fresh Communist attack regained Pyongyang in December. By the end of the year, North Korea was again fully under Communist control. Then, on December 31, the Chinese, vowing to "liberate Korea" moved on Seoul. By January 15, they had recaptured it.

Before dawn on June 25, 1950, the Soviet-equipped North Korean People’s Army into the Republic of South Korea. Two days later, after an emergency session of the Security Council (which the Soviets voluntarily did not attend), the United Nations invited its members to help South Korea against the invasion. President Truman immediately involved US air and naval forces, and added ground troops a few days later.
The Korean War was the first ever "police action" to taken by the UN, however more importantly, it was a symbol of the Cold War: In a remote land, the forces of democracy (from US) would come up against the Communists (Soviet Union, with Communist China support). Despite the fact that there was never a formal declaration of war, the conflict escalated to a point where 20 nations were involved.
In the first weeks of war, the North Korean People’s Army steamrolled across South Korea, capturing the country’s port city, Inchon, and its capital, Seoul. They put pressure on the UN beachhead (an area in hostile territory that has been occupied and is held for further troops and supplies) at Pusan, on the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula.
Then General Douglas MacArthur, the 70-year-old World War II hero, was named supreme commander of UN forces. He executed a dramatic landing at Inchon, and recaptured Seoul in September. The United States launched a new goal: the unification of Korea. In October, UN troops invaded North Korea, took its capital, Pyongyang,and rolled on towards the Chinese border.

                              


1951 Life in Manila in the 50's were easier, the exhange rate was 2 pesos to one $; Top Hit songs from 1951 to 1954  
First-generation computers had shown their usefulness during World War II, largely for solving codes, and leading engineers recognized the enormous potential of devices that could solve problems in milliseconds. By 1951, all-electronic computers (using vacuum tubes instead of moving parts) started to be used for civilian purposes in the United States and Britain, marking the dawn of the information age.
In 1946, two scientists, John Eckert and John Mauchly, while at the University of Pennsylvania, built the first all-purpose, all-electronic digital computer, for the US army. Disappointed by the slow pace and conflicting goals of academic research, they left the University shortly after, to form Eckert-Mauchly Computing Corporation. Brilliant at engineering but poor at business, they were on the brink of bankruptcy until 1950 , when Remington Rand, a major office-supply company, bought their business. The following year, the engineers delivered the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) to the US Census Bureau in Philadelphia.           

In our elementary grades and first Holy Communion  

UNIVAC was by far the best computer built so far. It used magnetic tape instead of bulky punch cards for information input and output, and was capable of reading 7,200 digits per second and of handling alphabets and numbers with ease. Its success stirred the business-machine industry (still dependent on mechanical devices such as typewriters), forcing sales leader IBM (International Business Machines) to revise its low opinion of electronic computing. Determined to protect its market, IBM set to work on its own series of "thinking" machines. Over the next three decades, as such computers spread gradually across the planet, most would be labeled IBM.

1953   Magsaysay wins over Quirino  in  Presidential elections;   Songs of  53              
Mount  Everest   Conquered                 
Mt. Pico de loro in the Philippines 
On May 29, 1953, New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on earth at 29,028 feet. Upon reaching the peak, the climbers, part of a British expedition, shook hands and unrolled a string of flags (United Nations, British, Nepalese, Indian). They stayed in the subzero (below zero degrees) cold for 15 minutes, breathing from their oxygen tanks, then began the descent.  In England, Hillary and the leader of the expedition, John Hunt were promptly knighted. Hillary later returned to the Himalayas and helped build schools, hospital, and airfields for the Sherpa people, without whom he could have never made it to the top.
On April 25, 1953, Francis Crick and James D Watson, scientists at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratories, published an article in the British scientific journal, Nature, defining the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). They presented it as a double helix – two intertwined , spiraling strands of polymers (large molecules made up of a linked series of small molecules). When DNA separates into individual strands, each strand becomes the foundation on which another identical one is built. Each new molecule contains the same genetic information as the original strand. Thus are genes and eventually, chromosomes (DNA) duplicated, and genetic traits reproduced.

The undeclared Korean War ended in 1953, after three years of fighting between North Korean and Chinese Communists against the United Nations forces (mainly South Korean and American). An estimated four million people died, including nearly a million Chinese, 54,000 Americans, several thousand other UN troops and some two millions North and South Koreans. However, very little territory was actually gained or lost between the two sides.
Peace talks had begun in the spring of 1951, but had been obstructed by two main issues: where to draw the truce-line between the two Koreas, and what to do with the prisoners of war. It was only in June 1953, that the two groups neared an agreement (at the UN’s border, and a neutral commission to judge in the case of prisoners unwilling to be repatriated (sent back to their homeland against their wills, like refugees). On July 27, the agreement was signed, ending the war.
1954
The University of the Philippines Preparatory School was established in U. P. Manila campus
A Vaccine for Polio                  Hit songs of 1955  
UP Prep was a unique high school created in 1954, when the UP Board of Regents authorized then UP President Vidal Tan to open a first class high school in Manila.




The school’s high standard curriculum was designed for secondary school graduates with the aptitudes and intellectual talents for university level education. The faculty was carefully selected for these advanced subjects.






Only by passing a battery of rigorous examinations could a student get in, and once accepted, he or she had to hurdle to pass each of the four tough years of the highest standard of education ever given to high school students in the Philippines before one could graduate.

In 1973, after graduating 20 classes — comprised altogether of 1500 graduates — UP Prep was merged with UP High School to later become what is now known as UP Integrated High School.
  U.P. Preparatory High School in the original site of UP 
A Vaccine for Polio       
On 26 April 1954, the largest clinical trial in medical history was launched in New York City by the National Foundation for Infant Paralysis (NFIP). It was the testing of a vaccine against polio, which was discovered by Jonas Edward Salk.
Salk had worked on the vaccine for several years, employing methods developed by John Enders at Havard University. The vaccine is actually the polio virus itself, but treated to make it unable to pass on the disease, while allowing the body to build up immunity against polio.
Salk, however, was apprehensive about the mass trial. A similar trial in 1935, gave healthy children polio, killing six of them. The virologist had tested the vaccine on some children, including his three sons, but was still unsure about the vaccine. "When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine, you don’t sleep well for two or three months."
However, the NFIP, founded by US President Franklin Roosevelt (himself paralysed by polio), went ahead with vaccinating 1.8 million children across 44 states, at a cost of $7.5 million. This marked the end for a disease that affected tens of thousands of children every year.





First Entrance Exam to the University 
and the arduous passage to Be A         
Preppy at U.P. Preparatory  School        
 On March 16, 1957 Magsaysay left Manila for Cebu City where he spoke at three educational institutions. That same night, at about 1 a.m., he boarded the presidential plane "Mt. Pinatubo", a C-47, heading back to Manila. In the early morning hours of March 17, his plane was reported missing. It was late in the afternoon that day that newspapers reported that the airplane had crashed on Mt. Manunggal in Cebu, and 26 of the 27 passengers and crew aboard were killed, only newspaperman Néstor Mata survived. Vice President Carlos P. García, who was on an official visit to Australia at the time, assumed the presidency to serve out the last eight months of Magsaysay's term. 

On 4 October 1957, the Russians won the first round of the epic "space race" between the Soviet Union and the United States by successfully launching a satellite into orbit around the Earth. The spherical, 56 centimetre (22 inch) Sputnik was fired into space using rockets developed from wartime V2 rockets used by the Nazis.

The V2 rockets had been developed for the purpose of carrying hydrogen-bombs great distances around the world. Sergei Korolyev, the project's chief designer was serving a life sentence for treason at Kolyma Gulag when the World War II ended and Stalin made him responsible for locating German rocket engineers in the Soviet zone to exploit their skills. When Khrushkev needed an image boosting propaganda coup to convince the USA that the USSR had developed intercontinental missiles, Korolyev was put in charge of designing a satellite.
Although given only six weeks to design Sputnik, the project was a success. Passing over Asia, Europe and the US, a message of triumph was transmitted from a battery-powered radio contained in the satellite. But before the year was out, history was made again. On November 3, a second satellite, Sputnik II was fired into space carrying the first animal in space -- a female dog named Laika. Laika was launched into orbit for the purpose of studying the effects of space travel on animals in preparation of sending humans.
Passed the selection process 40 % quit or     flunked in the upper classes mostly in the  
junior years; Changes in Math Subjects ie.  
Solid Geometry add Oriental To US History  
1959   Passed

he Gauntlet & on to 3rd Year, Excellent Faculty; PMT & PEd. forced upon us on Saturdays      


On New Year's Day 1959, les barbudos (the bearded ones) led by their firey leader, Fidel Castro, took Havana, ousting the government of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who fled the day before, taking with him most of the national treasury. Under Batista -- dominant since 1933 and outright dictator from 1952 -- Cuba, the world's largest producer of sugarcane, had suffered brutal repression and gross exploitation.
The corrupt dictator crushed any opposition by either jailing or having them killed, siphoned away some $40 million from state coffers and sold the country to foreign capitalists. At the time of the revolution, Americans had a 40 percent stake in Cuban sugar, a 9 percent share in mineral wealth, and a whopping 80 percent interest in controlled public utilities as well as other interests in the oil refineries, banking and tourism industries. Investors made huge profits but little of the wealth trickled back to the six million island inhabitants.
In 1953, a young lawyer named Fidel Castro led a failed uprising and was jailed, where he famously announced, "History will absolve me." Cuban's admired his mettle and his campaign against Batista drew support from a broad cross-section of the population, including landless peasants, urban workers and middle-class businessmen.
When Castro was freed in a 1955 amnesty, he went to Mexico and plotted Batista's overthrow, finally returning in 1956 to wage a guerrilla war. The slogan of his insurrection was "Cuba for Cubans". Assuming total power in 1959, Castro began aggressive agrarian and industrial reform measures, eventually expropriating a billion dollars worth of American properties.
Opponents began to suspect that Castro was communist. In February 1960, Castro signed a five-million ton sugar deal with the Soviet Union; later, when U.S. refineries in Cuba refused Soviet oil, Castro seized them. U.S. President Eisenhower responded with trade embargoes and a year later severed diplomatic relations. Inevitably, Castro moved closer to the Soviets and after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the (embarrassing) failed invasion attempt by the U.S., declared that his revolution was indeed communist: the first in the Western Hemisphere.     At U.P. Los Banos in uniform with Mother and siblings '59 
by Henry W. Longfellow

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

 





1960: Pasig River still alive then, now heavy polluted and black in color. The Pasig River was a clear, flowing body of water that served as the center of commerce in Spanish colonial Manila. Stretching 27 kilometers, it connects Laguna Lake to Manila Bay and was the major source of water and livelihood of the many communities along its banks. People washed clothes in the shallower waters and fisher folks’ daily catch were always bountiful. The passenger boats that plied the river from the nearby province of Laguna to Manila and back served as the primary means of transportation. Today’s generation, however, has no recollection of the Pasig River in its heyday



Mapua and Lyceum College extreme upper left. A City Hall  the dominant motif (remember that the pre-war City Hall was almost razed to the ground)…this tower-like building will command views of Manila Bay, the Botanical Gardens, the surrounding districts of Manila, including the mountains of Cavite, Corregidor, Mariveles and Bataan, Banahaw, and Makiling.” The air in Manila back then must have really been pollution-free for these views to be possible.


Plaza Goiti Jeepney stop: In the 60's my jeep ride to Tayabas St., begins here. Notice Dencia restaurant near the small bridge where hawkers sell puppies and dollars
1961 Class  61  Graduation  At The Crossroads Time in the 60's  Two paths, PMA  w/ a year at MIT or a degree in BSChE at MIT; Plan B won 
On August 13 1961, a grim convoy of tanks and troops wound through eastern Berlin before dawn. By sunrise, East German soldiers had stretched barbed wire across the city, cutting off the Communist sector from the capitalist. A network of concrete walls and electrified fences, guarded by armed men, dogs and minefields soon replaced the wire. Churchill's Iron Curtain metaphor had become a reality.
I started the decade as a junior at the University of the Philippines in fervent preparation as a cadet of the PMA. Temporary enrollment at MIT and then appointment to the cadet corps at the academy was the plan, however, my 20/40 eyesight failed the standards. I remember my tepid dedication to my new course ChE, passing was enough. I recall the loves, my only solace for past failures, the friends and stormy situations that I weathered through in High School. As in life surviving the cards you are dealt with, the unspoken pecking order among bigger classmates and the so called in crowd was the rule. That lone wolf streak that kept me apart was pride in my family's heritage and that set me off against the teenage precepts of the times, further forming that stallwart pioneer spirit. Later when of age and after further studies, having ever spurred curiousity, like my forefathers, aspired a life of adventure and Public Service.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAUHglnkdjc&feature=related
The 30-mile barrier was built ostensibly to keep out saboteurs and subversives but the Berlin Wall was in fact meant to keep East Germans in. Since 1949, 2.5 million had fled the economic hardships and political repression of Germany's Communist half, creating labour shortages and a "brain drain" of professionals and skilled workers. West Berlin, an island of democracy and capitalism in the midst of East Germany was the principal escape route. In addition, since thousands of eastern-Berliners worked in western Berlin before the wall was built, defectors could easily evade detection.
Through the years, the Soviets had periodically demanded that all Berlin be made a "free city" with both Western and Soviet troops withdrawn. But the Western powers, fearing a total communist take-over, had refused.                                               

Rizal Hall, at Padre Faura
In June 1961, Khrushchev threatened to use nuclear weapons if the "Berlin question" was not swiftly resolved. When heightening tension accelerated the stampede of illegal emigrants (30,000 East Germans defected in July), the Communist authorities decided to stem the flow by force. The wall was their solution. Henceforth travel eastward was subject to strict restrictions while travel westward was banned.
Though crowds of angry West Berliners confronted the wall builders (only to be dispersed with tear gas and water cannons), and the United States sent in extra troops as a symbolic gesture, fear of retaliation ruled out more forceful measures. A trade embargo against East Berlin was considered but the Communists vowed to blockade West Berlin in response. Eventually, the East Germans encircled all of West Berlin with a fence topped by watchtowers. Travel restrictions for Westerners eased somewhat in the 1980s, but the wall and all it stood for remained intact for nearly three decades.
U. P. High  Diliman Campus  where  we had our Physical Education classes on Saturdays.I missed this University but afraid to waste a year; stayed w/ MIT
John F. Kennedy Speech, April 27, 1961 American Newspaper Publishers Association. In a speech that should shock Americans. He warns the press and America to be on the lookout for the exact circumstances that have manifest themselves under the Bush Administration and the false flag of state sponsored terrorism. This speech should chill Americans. Kennedy died trying to warn us. He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve and the C.I.A. On November 22, 1963, hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by mutiple assassin's bullets as his motorcade took and unscheduled turn in Dallas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; and youngest to die. The Secret Service was not by his side, they had been called off of his motorcade. Who would have the power to do this? This speech which has now transended time could be the key to saving America from the fate which looms over it like a dark spectre.  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=642552841321950688&q=kennedy#


 The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, 
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep

Our Love of the Mountains and open Space
I would be remiss if I do not mention my favorite swimming hole in Tanay, Daranak Falls. Remembering fondly, cherishing memories of early summer vacations spent at this place. This 14-meter high falls is truly a refreshing site. A short walk over the top of Daranak are smaller, cascading streams known as Batlag Falls. It is located at Bgy. Tandang Kutyo in the town of Tanay. The place has been transformed into a public park/resort operated by the government.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw_4h07DUKk&feature=related
I will lift up mine eyes to the hills
From whence cometh my help
My help cometh from the Lord
Who hath made heaven and earth  
Looking up Powell St. from Market St. The canteen at Woolworth on your right, served me well at lunch. During my job search, the hills of San Francisco was a hindrance. I think my overdeveloped legs were the outcome of the constant walking in SF. The Filipino community has grown remarkably since World War II and has spread to all areas of the city, especially the South of Market area. The affluent Castro district (technically Eureka Valley near Twin Peaks) has attracted gays and lesbians from throughout the country, becoming perhaps the most famous gay neighbourhood in the world. Its streets are adorned with elegantly restored Victorian homes and landmarks highlighting significant dates in the struggle for gay rights. It is said that no local politician can win an election without the gay community's vote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3GbF9Bx6E&NR=1

1962   The Cuban Missile   Crisis    The Rudimentary Stage of Environmental Awareness Movement;  Top Hits of 1962  
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring changes public perception

In 1962, Rachel Carson published a book which would soon challenge the public’s trust in scientific "marvels" such as pesticides and began the tide of concern for the environment which presently swept through the developed world. In  Silent Spring, Rachel Carson shocked readers by making them visualize a place where no birds sang, hen’s eggs never hatched and apple trees bore no fruit – a place where cattle died mysteriously in the fields and children fell dead on the playground. Then she told them the place was real, if only in composite: Its description was drawn from real-life incidents that actually happened in the United States and

in other countries where artificial pesticides were being used.  The Beatles Fashion Trend
Silent Spring alerted millions to the dangers of the toxic substances that in recent decades had become commonplace on farms and in households around the world. Agents of agribusiness and the chemical industry, thrown off by Carson’s fine prose style, attacked her scientific credentials. In fact, she was a respected marine biologist who’d carefully traced the destructive effects of two major pesticide groups, chlorinated hydrocarbons and organic phosphates, as they worked their way though the ecosystem.
But Carson did not want a total ban but argued instead for controlled use. She revealed that DDT (one of the most popular poisons) could now be found at the ice caps. She explained how insecticides residue on treated produce is stored in human tissues and passed from mother to unborn child. And she helped launch the modern environmental movement.
A Kennedy administration study confirmed study confirmed Carson’s report and in 1972, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT. Many other countries followed suit. Even so, the use of pesticides on food continued to grow, reaching nearly a billion pounds annually in the United States alone by the 1980s.


 
1963 
deep in my ChE major, heavy in extra curricular   activities &   Alpha Phi Omega 
The world was horror-struck on 22 November 1963 when John F Kennedy, the charismatic young president, became the third U.S. President to have been assassinated. At 12:30pm, Friday, the President was travelling with his wife, Mrs Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally in a black Lincoln convertible through the streets of Dallas. While Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder’s home-movie camera rolled, a hidden assassin shot President Kennedy in the head even as crowds of cheering, flag-waving people watched on.
The limousine sped off to Parkland Memorial hospital with the President slumped across the backseat with a blood-spattered Mrs Kennedy cradling him in her arms. JFK was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
By 1:45pm, Dallas police had seized a suspect: Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old employee of the Texas School Book Depository, from whose sixth-floor window the shots were said to have been fired. Two days later, on Sunday, November 24, millions of Americans watched on television as Oswald was being transferred from the Dallas city jail to a county jail. Suddenly, a local night-club owner with a criminal record named Jack Ruby stepped out of a small crowd and shot Oswald at point-blank range in the stomach with a .35-calibre revolver. Oswald died within minutes.
The alleged assassin’s bizarre, mob-style "silencing" and other murky details of the assassination (including various interpretations of Zapruder’s film, the only film record of the event) gave rise, almost instantly, to a host of theories about who was responsible. (The official explanation, the Warren report of 1964, did little to assuage the nation’s bewilderment.) Indeed, JFK’s assassination grew into a kind of national obsession, spawning numerous conspiracy   Alpha Phi Omega Brothers Delta Chapter Philippines theories. "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" became the question by which a generation of bereft  Americans  identified itself.    By the time Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president aboard Air Force One in Dallas three hours after the shooting, the Kennedy legend had grown to epic proportions, hiding harsh realities including the nation’s violent division over civil rights and its increasing entanglement in Vietnam.
Cigarettes lost their glamour in 1964, the year the U.S. government issued its landmark report on smoking. Confirming private studies, the Surgeon General’s findings, compiled by ten independent researchers, implied that smoking constituted a major cause of lung cancer and heart disease. Less than two years after the report’s release, the U.S. Congress ordered that warnings against the dangers of smoking appear on all cigarette packages sold domestically. Great Britain soon followed suit; by 1972, West Germany, the United States and Canada had banned television advertising of cigarettes. Many European countries also began imposing steep taxes on cigarettes.
Since the 1950s, scientists had already begun linking tobacco to disease. By then, lung cancer, previously unheard of at the turn of the century, had become a big killer. Its increased incidence corresponded roughly to the rise of smoking’s popularity. Which boomed during World War I, when tobacco manufacturers supplied troops with free cigarettes. During World War II, the popularity of smoking again received a similar boost, when doctors even encouraged smoking as a way to calm nerves. As the hazards emerged, tobacco companies, which had once recommended the beneficial properties of their product, began making defensive claims. As early as 1949, an advertising campaign for Camel, a popular brand, featured anonymous "noted throat specialists" unable to document a single case of Camel-caused throat irritation.
In the United Sates, at least, the Surgeon General’s warning was effective as the numbers of smokers plummeted. In the mid-1960s, over 40 percent of American adults smoked. By the nineties, the proportion had decreased to under 25 percent.


1965  This was the start  of    the  diaspora  to "our chosen  destiny" to the USA;  Top hits 65      Work in Private Sector   
1965 Immigration Law   Changed the Face of America      My Choice Wheels   Chosen Nation  
President Lyndon B. Johnson (center) signs the sweeping immigration bill of 1965 into law at a ceremony on Liberty Island, Oct. 4, 1965. Sen. Edward Kennedy and his brother, Sen. Robert Kennedy, are seen at right.  The Long View on Immigration
As a young politician, Sen. Edward Kennedy helped steer the 1965 immigration law through the Senate. He reflects on the politics that helped push the overhaul through then -- and on the current debate over immigration -- in an interview with NPR's Jennifer Ludden, exclusively on npr.org:May 9, 2006 Read the Q&A with Kennedy All Things Considered, May 9, 2006 · As Congress considers sweeping changes to immigration law, nearly all the debate has centered on the problem of illegal immigration. Little discussed are the many concerns of legal immigrants, the estimated 3 million to 4 million who are, as it's so often been put --"already standing in line."

The current system of legal immigration dates to 1965. It marked a radical break with previous policy and has led to profound demographic changes in America. But that's not how the law was seen when it was passed -- at the height of the civil rights movement, at a time when ideals of freedom, democracy and equality had seized the nation. Against this backdrop, the manner in which the United States decided which foreigners could and could not enter the country had become an increasing embarrassment.


The United States entered the Vietnam War in earnest in 1965. As there was little popular support for full-scale intervention, President Johnson initially relied on air power. Continuous bombing of communist-held North Vietnam began in March. The first Marines landed days later in the South to defend the Da Nang air base. But South Vietnam forces (known as ARVN) needed help in the field as well and Johnson quietly began agreeing to the requests of General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces in Vietnam, for more ground troops. By the end of the year, 180,000 troops were in the country.
Westmoreland’s strategy was aimed at wearing down the enemy rather than seizing territory. The bombing targeted not only northern industry, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, (the network of paths by which the North sent men and Chinese- and Russian-provided artillery to the South), but also Southern settlements suspected to be harbouring guerrillas. On the ground, the basic objective was to eliminate as many northern infiltrators and Viet Cong (communist guerrilla fighters) as possible. "Kill ratios" were impressive: in the first engagement with North Vietnamese regulars, at Ia Drang, Americans killed 1200 men while losing only 200.
But numbers were not everything. Combat for U.S. soldiers meant slogging through jungles and paddies in pursuit of elusive quarry. Snipers and booby-traps were everywhere; friend and foe were difficult to tell apart and shooting first seemed the safer option. On "search and destroy" missions, peaceful-looking villages were razed and the villagers herded into bleak "strategic hamlets". The drain on troop morale was great. These actions also alienated many South Vietnamese (and many in the ARVN), aggravating the unhappiness caused by the corrupt and repressive U.S.-backed government in Saigon. Back home in the States, news footage and images of injured civilians fuelled antiwar sentiments. In November, 50,000 protesters marched on Washington. The Vietnam War began to look increasingly like a mistake.
Read how the media influenced the Vietnam War





The Grande Dame of San Francisco Union Square Hotels
At the turn of the century, the guardians of the Charles Crocker family announced plans to build The Westin St. Francis. Their vision was to make San Francisco the "Paris of the West," and their stunning Union Square San Francisco hotel would be their flagship. After studying all of Europe's grand hotels - from those in Berlin, Vienna, and Monaco to Claridge's in London and The Ritz in Paris - construction on the original St. Francis began. Two years and $2.5 million later, on March 21, 1904, the doors of The St. Francis opened. By seven o'clock that evening, a line of carriages and automobiles stretching three blocks waited to approach her brightly lit towers. The hotel became so popular that within six months, the owners announced plans to add a third wing, two floors of apartments, and a ballroom. The St. Francis had become the center of the city's social, literary, and artistic life.
After the Great Earthquake of 1906, the square was dubbed "Little St. Francis" because of the temporary shelter erected for residents of The St. Francis. Documented records of the opening were lost in the fire that destroyed the interior of the hotel's original 250 rooms following the earthquake. Within 40 days of the inferno, a temporary hotel of 110 rooms was erected in a court around the Dewey Monument in Union Square, and The St. Francis continued as a focal point of the city.
The hotel refurbished its interior and re-opened late in 1907, with 450 guest rooms.
A third wing opened in 1908, and further additions followed on Post Street - making The St. Francis the largest hotel on the Pacific Coast. Construction of the 32-story Pacific Tower began early in 1969 - opened in 1971 - adding a vast new complex of guest rooms, suites, and venues and banquet facilities.
The spirit of the 'whole generation with a new explanation', as McKenzie and Phillips put it, was centred on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, a low-rent district next to Golden Gate Park. It was a laboratory for alternative lifestyles, and during 1967 an estimated 100,000 young people headed there in the hopes of enlightenment, freedom and a cheap place to crash.
Despite McKenzie's unease,'The Summer of Love' was not a journalistic invention. The phrase was coined by a local activist group, The Council for a Summer of Love. In April 1967 it announced: 'This summer, the youth of the world are making a holy pilgrimage to our city, to affirm and celebrate a new spiritual dawn --the activity of the youth of the nation which has given birth to Haight-Ashbury is a small part of a worldwide spiritual awakening.'
Haight-Ashbury today is more psychedelic supermarket than holy city, the hippy vibe kept alive by souvenir stores that sell postcards reading Having A Groovy Time In Haight-Ashbury and tobacconists who stock exotic glass pipes next to warning signs that say Intended For Legal Use Only. The change is hardly surprising. We are now as far away from the events of the Summer of Love as the original hippies were from the release of Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, the first movie to use speech.
The Grateful Dead are to Haight-Ashbury what The Beatles are to Liverpool. True to themselves, egalitarian, exploratory, they exemplified the spirit of the time and place. Jerry Garcia is still the most prevalent poster image in the stores on Haight Street. Even local fire trucks carry Grateful Dead stickers.
Other bands lived in the area. Jefferson Airplane bought a colonial-style mansion in 1968 across the road from Golden Gate Park at 2400 Fulton Street and Big Brother and the Holding Company got together with Janis Joplin at 1090 Page Street. Izu said that Jimi Hendrix briefly lived in an apartment over 1524 Haight Street (now The Tobacco Centre) which was a haven for draft-dodgers.
Almost all the Haight Street stores from 1967 have gone. The Psychedelic Shop, the original drug paraphernalia store, has been replaced by Fat Slice Pizza. The premises of the multicoloured underground newspaper The Oracle have become Recycled Records. The Drogstore Cafe, a favourite hippy hangout, is now the Magnolia Pub and Brewery.
The more overtly political counterpart to Haight Street is Telegraph Avenue, over the Bay Bridge in Berkeley. The story of this strip in the Sixties is currently being told in a black-and-white photo display in the window of Rasputin Music (2403 Telegraph). It shows police firing tear gas, students putting flowers down the barrels of National Guard rifles, sit-ins and Martin Luther King preaching Civil Rights.
Today things are tranquil. The steps of Sproul Plaza, where the Free Speech Movement started in 1964, are deserted and, judging by the nearby notice boards, today's students are more interested in clubbing than being clubbed. Telegraph Avenue, like Haight Street,has become a haven for collectors of tie-dye T-shirts and small scales for weighing smoking materials.
Houses in Haight-Ashbury now
sell for upwards of $1,500,000
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the early 1960s and spread around the world. The word hippie derives from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. These people inherited the countercultural values of the Beat Generation, created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs such as cannabis and LSD to explore alternative states of consciousness. In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture, leading to the legendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast.


I left my heart in San Francisco: Touring the vibrant city that inspired a song

I came to San Francisco in search of a new life. Well, not the song itself - that was already on my plans- but the cityscape that inspired me and the sweet flower people in their new awakening.
Released almost half a century ago by Tony Bennett, I Left My Heart In San Francisco is one of the most evocative city anthems ever recorded.
In 1964, it was picked up by the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau to add a musical punch to its campaigns. Five years later, it became one of two official city songs (the other being San Francisco from the 1936 film of the same name). 
Ablaze with newness and vitality: San Francisco's bright skyline framed by the Oakland Bay Bridge
To immerse myself in the song, there was only one place I could stay - the Fairmont Hotel, where Bennett first performed it during a concert series in December 1961. It was also conveniently 'high on a hill' and very close to the cable cars.
A San Francisco landmark for over a century, the five-star Fairmont has no shortage of claims to fame. It was the HQ for those reconstructing the city after the 1906 earthquake, which struck on the day the hotel was due to open, and is where the United Nations Charter was drafted in 1945. Its list of celebrity guests reads like a Who's Who of the 20th Century.
Yet in its Heritage Hall - a long corridor decked with framed hotel memorabilia - the sheet music to I Left My Heart In San Francisco and a black-and-white photo of Tony Bennett playing in its Venetian Room hang alongside images of princesses and presidents. The Fairmont is justly proud of its unique association with the song.
City song: I left my Heart in San Francisco was a huge hit for Tony Bennett and the city itself
Affixed to the base of the low but wide stage where Bennett once stood is a brass plaque that reads: 'Tony Bennett Time Capsule. To commemorate the restoration of The Fairmont San Francisco, Mr Bennett placed a time capsule containing personal mementos in the stage of the Venetian Room where he first sang I Left My Heart In San Francisco in 1962 [sic].'
It is dated October 19, 1999. One of the items in the capsule is a red Baccarat heart from Tiffany & Co given to the singer by Liza Minnelli.
'It was pure nostalgia. We missed the warmth and openness of the people and the beauty. We never really took to New York.'
'New York is a hard, ruthless city. It lives on the edge of terror and catastrophe. New York is tired. San Francisco has newness and vitality.'

High on a hill: The Fairmont Hotel where Bennett first sang his hit
The song was recorded at CBS Studios on 30th Street on January 23, 1962, and released as the B side of Once Upon A Time. DJs, however, preferred I Left My Heart In San Francisco and it became a hit. An album with the same title followed. 'That song helped make me a world citizen,' said Bennett. 'It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe. It changed my whole life.'
I had decided to explore San Francisco using the song as my guidebook. The Fairmont was a good place to start. From my 17th-floor window I could see the city laid out like a menu of tourist attractions, from Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz Island.
Yet, as everybody knows, San Francisco isn't really a city 'high on a hill' as the song suggests. It is a city on many hills, ranging from the 100ft Rincon Hill to the 925ft Mount Davidson.
Surprisingly the exact number of hills is still a matter of dispute - if there is a hill on top of a hill, does that make one big hill or two small ones? The official count is 43 (44 if you consult Wikipedia), but San Francisco hill-lover Tom Graham, currently attempting to walk every street in the city, claims to have found hitherto unrecognised hills that would bring the total to more than 50.
The most accessible hill for looking over the city is Twin Peaks (922ft), charmingly known as Los Pechos de la Choca (The Breasts of the Indian Maiden) by early Spanish settlers.
There is only a viewing terrace and a telecommunications mast on top but the view across the city and over the water to Oakland and Berkeley is unparalleled, as is the tranquillity. 
Heady heights: A cable car scrambles up one of San Francisco's many steep streets with Alcatraz Island in the background
Next on the song's tick list were the little cable cars that 'climb halfway to the stars'. No matter how many times you've ridden them, these cars, with their sounds of bells and grinding Victorian machinery, always provide a kick. And the route that runs closest to The Fairmont, the Hyde Street line, happens to be the one that will get you closest to the stars. Its steepest gradient, 21 per cent, is the sharpest on the system.
Another first for me was visiting the Cable Car Barn Museum at 1201 Mason. This building, which houses some examples of cars from the early days, is still the powerhouse of the system. From the mezzanine you can see the engines and wheels that wind the cables through the subterranean channels and pulleys.
Although the song doesn't introduce the most obvious San Franciscan image - the Golden Gate Bridge - it does mention the 'morning fog', which best displays its dramatic power as it rolls under and over the familiar rust-coloured structure. Indeed, it was a photo of a fog-wreathed bridge that graced the cover of Bennett's I Left My Heart In San Francisco album in 1962.
The ideal place to see the bridge in all its glory is from Crissy Field, a recently restored waterfront recreation area that begins not too far from Fisherman's Wharf and ends at Fort Point. And the best way to explore Crissy Field is by bike (hire from Blazing Saddles outside Pier 41).
It's a beautiful ride through a peaceful area of promenade, sand dunes and reclaimed marsh. On my way out, the fog was but a wisp. By the time I was halfway back, only the tops of the bridge's towers were visible. It can happen that quickly.
The one remaining image from the song was the 'blue and windy sea'. To experience this, I went on an hour-long cruise of the bay that took me from Pier 39, where sea lions bask in the sun on floating platforms, down to Golden Gate Bridge and back again via Alcatraz. It was all I needed to confirm that the sea is indeed blue and the wind is windy. 
In for a chill: The city's fog, seen engulfing the Golden Gate Bridge, is infamous


350 miles north of Los Angeles, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge welcomes you to San Francisco.

Introduction

Possibly the most mythologized part of the most mythologized country in the world, California is where Americans go to live the American dream.
The third largest and most populous state in the Union lies on the sun-drenched Pacific coast, with thousands of years of history and wave after wave of arrivals shaping its present.
Its size is equal to an entire nation, as is its wealth, with the entertainment, wine and tourism industries all adding to its financial muscle and all-round desirability.
Life might not be quite as easy as the myth for some, but its usually as sunny as you imagine, and California does try its best to live up to its own hype.
Most accounts say the "summer" actually began Jan. 14, 1967, with the "Human Be-In," billed as "a Renaissance of compassion, awareness and love" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, which drew up to 20,000 people. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane performed, and among the speakers were poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD guru Timothy Leary, who for the first time used the phrase he would make famous: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." The event established San Francisco as the center of the emerging counterculture of hippies and flower children, and Scott McKenzie's hit song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" promised that "summertime will be a love-in there." Several San Francisco activists soon formed the Council for the Summer of Love to help prepare the city for the influx of young people from across the country that was expected after schools and colleges let out for summer
.



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