FALL/WINTER 1962

SEPTEMBER 4TH

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Grant High opens its doors for fall classes. Grant had been around for 38 years at this point and September 1962  marked the start of the school's 39th year of operation. 

sEPTEMBER 27TH

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Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring published.  Beginning of the U.S. environmental movement.

OCTOBER 1ST

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James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, escorted by U.S. marshals, a major milestone in the civil rights movement.  On October 2nd, The Oregonian records the event with front page headlines.

OCTOBER 12TH

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Grant closed for the holiday, just in time for the big Columbus Day Storm (“The most powerful extratropical cyclone recorded in the U.S. in the 20th century.”)

OCTOBER 15TH

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Grant athletes are thrilled to learn that Portland Mayor Terry Schrunk is asking the U.S. Olympic Committee to choose Portland as the site for the 19th Olympiad in 1968.

OCTOBER 16TH

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Cuban missile crisis begins: John Kennedy versus Nikita Khrushchev.  Grant seniors…especially the boys…worry about a war with the Soviets (“Will we be drafted?”).

OCTOBER 28TH

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Khrushchev announces over Radio Moscow that he has agreed to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba.

NOVEMBER 5TH

Portlanders are startled by a 5.2 earthquake that struck on Monday evening.  Not much damage but plenty of frayed nerves (“First the Russians, then the damn storm, and now this!  What’s next?”).

NOVEMBER 6TH

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In a closely watched election, Pat Brown is reelected governor of California, defeating Richard Nixon.  Nixon  sulks, saying “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

NOVEMBER 17TH

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Big Girls Don't Cry (The Four Seasons) hits the top of the charts. Click on the audio player below to hear the song.

NOVEMBER 28TH

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The U.S. Postmaster General announces a new five-digit Zip Code program that will revolutionize mail delivery in the United States.  Oregonians are skeptical (“Just more Washington nonsense; it definitely won’t work here.”).

DECEMBER 8TH

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PORTLAND REPORTER NEWSROOM
The big New York newspaper strike begins. Portland was still in the midst of its own long-running newspaper strike against The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal that lasted until 1965 (the Journal was absorbed by The Oregonian in 1961).  The striking union members set up a newsroom in an old Wells Fargo stable in northwest Portland and launched The Portland Reporter to compete with the two dailies; it folded in 1964.  

DECEMBER 30TH

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Bob Dylan’s hallmark Blowin’ in the Wind was performed publicly for the first time (airing on BBC Television).

WINTER/SPRING 1963

JANUARY 4TH

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The Oregonian predicts that Portlanders will flock to their local post offices on hearing news that this is the last business day to mail first class letters for four cents before the cost of a stamp skyrockets to the unheard price of a nickel.

FEBRUARY 7TH

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Please Please Me became the first Beatles song released in the U.S.

FEBRUARY 17TH

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Betty Frieden’s The Feminine Mystique was published; credited with launching the modern women’s movement.

march 30th

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Lesley Gore records It's My Party at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan. Within a month it's No.1 on the charts and becomes the big hit of 1963. Click on the audio player below to hear the recording. 

APRIL 6TH

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Portland’s rock group, The Kingsmen, record their hit song Louie, Louie in a single take. Grant High's Dick Peterson would join the group later that year as the drummer. Click on the audio player below to hear the song.

APRIL 27TH

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Fifteen-year-old Little Peggy March becomes the youngest female artist to have a U.S. chart-topping single, when her version of I Will Follow Him (RCA Victor) hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Click on the audio player below to hear her original 1963 recording.

MAY 6TH

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Harvard relieves 1960’s icon Timothy Leary of his teaching duties for failing to show up for classes, a minor milestone in the counterculture movement.  

JUNE 6TH

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Grant High School senior class commencement held at Portland Civic Auditorium—with over 600 seniors graduating. The June 3rd edition of The Grantonian (page 4) acknowledged that, after the departure of the seniors and an influx of 716 new freshman, Grant would remain Oregon's largest high school.

JUNE 15TH

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Grant’s Linda Jackson reigns over the 1963 Portland Rose Festival Parade as Queen Linda II.  Grantonians would have one more queen after Linda (1966) and then would wait 43 years for the next!  Click here to view a very cool home movie of the 1963 parade—Linda speeds by in the early part of the film (there’s a music track on this video so you might want to turn the volume down on your computer).