Cleanup walk turns into a ‘march’
The recent marches by college students against President-Elect Donald Trump brought back memories of the one time I participated in a “march.”
It was back in 1970. I was 18 and a freshman at Penn State’s Beaver Campus. Word was spreading about an Earth Day celebration that was to take place across the nation on April 22.
A group of students planned a number of events on campus, including the burial of a car engine. It was supposed to show that automobiles would soon become extinct from all the pollution they were causing. I guess we showed them, because those automobiles quit running shortly after that … well not exactly. It turned out absolutely no one followed our lead on that issue, thank God.
One of the more mundane activities was a cleanup walk through the neighboring town of Monaca, where I grew up. We hoped it would bring some attention to the Earth Day issue and show that as college students we were serious about wanting to clean up the environment.
It seemed as innocent and American as apple pie, but as we all know no good deed goes unpunished.
It dawned on the leaders of the event to seek a permit for the walk. But something went awry when they showed up for a meeting with borough council members. Apparently some of the council members, including my dad, took one look at the long-haired college students and figured they were up to no good. They issued the permit but told the students to be very careful less they be arrested and put in jail to rot. Needless to say, the students didn’t take kindly to the threats. Suddenly the walk had become a “march.”
I asked my dad, who was normally a very reasonable guy, what happened at the meeting, and he said a bunch of hippies wanted to march through the town and destroy everything in their path. Being a master of the obvious, I decided it probably wasn’t the best time to tell him that I would be one of the marchers.
But it wasn’t just my dad who was upset. Everyone in town it seemed was riled up. They genuinely feared these college students. There was even talk about chasing the marchers away and beating them up if necessary.
I was concerned but never gave any serious thought to not taking part in the “march.” I had already given my word that I would participate, and there was no turning back now.
So, that Saturday morning, I left the house early before anyone else woke up and made my way to Beaver Campus.
But to my huge surprise, there were only about 15-20 students gathering for the “march,” not the hundreds we had been anticipating. Even more disconcerting was that only five guys had showed up, and I was the biggest one, standing 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing all of 140 pounds.
So, we began our walk into town. I could see a bunch of faces I knew behind the locked doors of the American Legion where I had spent much time over the years. You could see the looks on their faces. It was a toxic combination of fear and anger. But at least they stayed behind those doors.
We walked on past the pool hall where I hung out all the time. There was some jeering, but it was nothing serious. We moved on past my grandmother’s corner grocery store where my Uncle Bill had a very bewildered look on his face.
We continued onward across the Monaca-Rochester Bridge and on to a nearby K-Mart store parking lot where some friends were waiting to give us rides back to the campus.
Overall, the “march” had been peaceful and thankfully very uneventful.
The only thing left was to go home and face the music from my dad. But lo and behold the Beaver County Times, which my father revered, had an editorial that day praising our “march.” They noted that the students had not only talked about the cleaning up the environment but had actually done something about it. Given the OK by the Beaver County Times, I knew my dad would say nothing, and he didn’t. I was home free. It was my first and last “march.”
Mark O’Keefe is the editorial page editor of the Herald-Standard. He can be reached by email at mokeefe@heraldstandard or by phone at 724-439-7569.