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GREENSBORO — Back in ’68, what Newsweek magazine calls the “year that changed everything,” the seniors at Dudley, Grimsley and Page lived in a protective bubble far from our country’s social and political fray.

They lived for house parties, Whiz Burgers and weekend trips to Myrtle Beach, where cheap beer and loud music turned Ocean Drive into their playground.

They lived for driving in a convertible, buying a new pair of Converse sneakers and turning into the Dukes of Soul or Carolyn and the Golden Hearts as they sang doo-wop, in four-part harmony, in Dudley’s Quadrangle.

Yeah, it was “American Graffiti” Southern-style, hardly a care in the world.

You see it in their yearbooks — page after page of fashions, haircuts and the classic “we’ll-hit-the-moon” yearbook statements.

It seems so long ago. Yet the year feels so similar. We’re fighting another war, fighting discrimination and wrestling with the same question asked four decades ago during that tumultuous year:

What is America, and what does it want to be?

The Class of ’68 has some answers. And they talk about it — if you prod — when they get together. Dudley held its Class of ’68 reunion last weekend, and Grimsley and Page will hold theirs this fall.

Sure, they laugh and go on about teachers, classmates and young love. But they also mention how their perspective has changed.

They see 1968 as an awakening, a time when their protective bubble cracked and they realized the need to become stronger, more politically aware and more interested in making a difference in their corner of the world.

They became teachers and public works directors, dentists and plumbers. They worked to improve housing for the elderly and the indigent, and raised their children with 1968 ever present in their minds and in their hearts.

“People at that time thought you were limited, but we thought we could go beyond what our fathers and mothers did,” said Carolyn Coleman Simms, Class of '68 from Dudley. “We thought we could conquer the world.”

For a minute, think about that year.

It began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and ended with Apollo 8 in space.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. America had 500,000 troops in Vietnam, and news anchor Walter Cronkite talked about the world teetering on the “brink of cosmic disaster.’’

Now, think about Greensboro — and the life of an 18-year-old — circa 1968.

Grimsley’s Jay Kinney had registered for the draft. In Charlotte, in a roomful of strangers, he stood in his underwear and heard an Army sergeant say, “One out of three of you guys will be in Vietnam in a very short period of time.”

Dudley’s Cassell Waldrum knew every time she saw a Marine who was delivering bad news come to a neighbor’s door. Another dead soldier. Another funeral. Another time to put on her navy-blue suit.

For Big Boy, who taught her how to bat right-handed.

For Alvin, who gave her, at age 13, her first kiss.

For Hank, her first crush, who walked her to her house right before he went to Vietnam, kissed her on her left jaw and said, “I won’t see you again.” He didn’t.

Grimsley’s Kay Van Hecke Maddox awoke graduation day to the blood-curdling screams of her father and older brother — “Robert Kennedy is dead!”

Meanwhile, the deaths of Kennedy and King left Dudley’s Mike Stimpson “as scared as I ever been in my whole life.”

After graduation, he started a job as an electronic technician with Southern Bell. He knew he would be in a new job, surrounded by white workers, and he wondered: “If they killed MLK and RFK, what are they going to do to me?’’

That time 40 years ago reminded them all of their own mortality, the very thing they talk about today.

They’re older. Their children are grown, their grandchildren are young, and a few have had health scares and family tragedies that have sent their classmates to their home and their bedside.

Kinney saw that. Cancer almost killed him last year. Matter of fact, the drugs that helped save his life cost eight of his fingers, half of his right foot and his left leg below the knee.

But as he lay in that hospital bed in Winston-Salem, some classmates from ’68 came to see him, those he knew as Uno, Putz, Bud, Twig, Sage, Stone and Roy.

“Building relationships like that, to me, is epic,” he said. “It becomes part of our identity, part of who we are.”

You saw that everywhere last weekend as 186 alums came from Belize and at least a half-dozen states for the Dudley reunion. The theme? “Living The Impossible Dream.”

Cassell Waldrum was sitting at the registration table at the downtown Marriott when she heard someone scream: “Where’s my buddy, Cassell!” It was Linda Young, a classmate who lives in Flint, Mich. Waldrum hadn’t seen her since graduation. They didn’t miss a beat.

“Cassell, I need a tuna fish sandwich,” Young told her. “Remember you used to sell them for 80 cents to me, girl!”

Mike Stimpson got slick. He bought two pair of Converse All-Stars — size 8½, one red, one white — to go with his lime green jacket, his blue suit and his red bow tie.

Back in ’68, when he bought a new pair of Converse, he felt like somebody. For his 40th reunion, he felt like somebody again — with his new shoes.

After Sunday’s service inside Dudley’s auditorium, Stimpson passed his boyhood home on Lincoln Street and saw an old man at the place where his next-door neighbor, Ernest Harris, once lived.

“Are you related to Ernest?” Stimpson asked.

“I ain’t related to him,” the man said. “I am him.”

Stimpson stopped. They talked for 30 minutes.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com