Then the story shifts to a summer of traffic, salvage and the Etrusco crowds. At the same time events were stirring elsewhere that would also impact Scituate. On June 8th 1956,Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. of Stoneham and of the Air Force will be the first American serviceman to be killed in Vietnam. His son will also be killed there nine years later. A major steel worker strike will highlight the issue of corruption in major unions . Chuck Berry will have a hit for the ages with Roll Over Beethoven. In God We Trust will become the official motto of the United States on July 30th . Jackson Pollock will die in August. So will the last soldier that served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Albert Woolson was 109. The last Confederate soldier, Walter Williams will survive him until 1959, passing at 117 years old.
Other milestones included the break up of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the same day, June 19, 1956 that Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller.
Several years ago the Doran family posted a home movie that showed how central Etrusco was to Scituate during the summer of 1956.
This story appeared in a newspaper from Cape Giradeau, Missouri. These kids don’t seem to mind a trip down to the Beach in May. Try to remember this picture; it will come back around
Traffic will be an issue all over town all summer long. Again there is a connection to a bigger initiative occurring all over the country. It was on June 29, 1956 that President Eisenhower signed the US. Federal Highway Act that created the Interstate Highway system. The target year was 1968. The target cost was 25 billion. The project was realized in 1993 at a cost of 425 billion.
Scituate had its own version of a man with a vision of fast food in Bill O’Connell
Again this was a story that was followed all over the country.
This article is from an Arizona paper This article is from a Virginia paper
The world kept turning as the salvage process continued on the beach along side the Scituate Light. Harry Belafonte’s Calypso album will be number one for 31 weeks. The first IBM disc drive was created by Reynold B. Johnson. Babe Didrikson died. The first successful nuclear power plant is opened in England. An uprising in Hungary is brutally put down by the Soviets. This will spill over into the Olympic games where in water polo, The Soviet Hungary match is labeled the “Blood in the Water” match for the vicious tactics of both sides. In early November as Etrusco made it to nearly 90 degrees off the beach, The Nobel Prize will be awarded for the invention of the transistor. John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter H. Brattain
An athletic achievement for the ages took place too:
The gamble written up on a cocktail napkin had paid off.
Three days after Etrusco was refloated, a group of ambitious and malicious men left Mexico bound for Cuba. Fidel Castro and 80 others, including Che Guevara as a medic, left their training base on November 25, 1956 headed for the overthrow of Batista
Also in the late fall, this editorial appeared in a Virginia newspaper that was tracking the salvage operation. White Americans were shifting their views on race. There is no bigger story in the 1960s. Rosa Park’s arrest and Dr. King’s activism were only parts of a larger transformation. This transformation will lead to court cases and legislation and the growth of suburbs like Scituate where the Etrusco story continued.
Two weeks after that Bill Russell joined the Celtics after helping the United States win the Gold Medal in Olympic basketball. On that same day, Larry Bird was born. Nelson Mandela was arrested in South Africa. Ten days later, in a sign of changing alliances, Japan was admitted to the United Nations. There were also concerns here in the School Department and recognition for the Police.
It was also neat to notice that in the summary of arrests there were two for going AWOL from military service.