10/23/2008:
Grand Forks was like any other Midwestern city in 1965. It was a thriving, bustling community, rapidly expanding south along the river and the economy was good. The Grand Forks Air Base had been established in the late 1950's and sorties of B52's flew from the newly established Strategic Air Command which, only two years earlier, had also begun installing the Minuteman II Missile wing. The influx of military paychecks marked a boost to the local markets.
The first half of the decade in the United States had seen escalation of the cold war, the assassination of a young and vibrant President and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. By 1965 the younger generation was learning to live with the threat of the Bomb. The only current invasion at the time was the British invasion which had secured a hold on the American music scene, although somewhere in Southeast Asia, a little country called Vietnam was leaking into the headlines because of a communist invasion from the north.
For most young Grand Forks men and women at the time, the escalating war was little more than a concern as they were more worried with being a failure in their chosen fields according to a national poll taken during the summer. The military draft had long been in effect since the Korean War but the influx of volunteers had minimized the need for this. The protests that were to become a major part of the second half of the decade were only marginally heard in songs like "Blowing in the Wind," sung by Peter, Paul and Mary and written by a young Minnesota man, Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan.
Another young man wrote a letter home, "Yesterday was the first time I saw anyone get killed and that was my buddy, Louis Fritz." He wrote further that he was going out as point-man on a patrol to an area where a group of Marines had been wiped out in an ambush and he stated, "It gets kind of hairy." but to calm the concerns of his family, he quickly added, "Naw, it isn’t that bad." On this date, 18-year-old, Bobby Swanson died from wounds he received near Da Nang, South Vietnam and became the first Grand Forks casualty of the war. To his family, friends and classmates, that little known war in Vietnam took on a new meaning—it had a face.
By Jim Davis
The Bismarck Tribune, October 27, 1965.
Grand Forks Herald, October 8, 1965
Grand Forks Herald, October 3, 1965