Dear Beachhead:

Congratulations for still hanging in here! I remember when I first held your baby-soft pages in those early days after your nativity, 15 years ago.

In that year we were fighting to keep the canals from becoming an extension of the Marina. It was the year of the Tet offensive in Vietnam; and in our country, while H.H.H. (Hubert Horatio Humphrey) was being nominated to oppose R.M.N. (Richard Milhouse Nixon), mayor Daley’s police were battering demonstrators in the streets as if they were cattle in a Chicago abattoir.

Things have changes: we’re both older.

But you have aged gracefully; hardly any of your wrinkles show (except occasionally on the letters-to-the-editors’ page).

In 40 years, if the world hasn’t been blown into radio-active pieces, I’m sure there still will be a Beachhead….HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEACHHEAD! LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S POINT OF VIEW!

S. E. Mendelson