December 09, 2010 09:39 AM UTC

On The 30th Anniversary Of John Lennon's Death

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• by: nancycronk

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s untimely death at the tender age of 40, I would like to initiate a discussion on how his life’s work influenced people here. A huge Lennon fan, I find myself more moved by his work with every passing year.

Songs like “Watching the Wheels”, “Imagine” and “Love is Real” were a stark contrast to other songs popular in the late 70’s/ early 80’s. I recall the year he died — I was a freshman at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Beatles were old news by then — we were dancing to a new sound called “punk” and listening to “Rock Lobster”, Blondie, and Styx. Still, some friends and I still enjoyed the Beatles too, although less than ten years after many of their records dominated the charts, they were already considered “slightly retro”.

(I’ll never forget my little nephew asking me in the mid 1980’s, “Did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” “Yeah, I think I heard that”, I chuckled.)

I remember walking back to the dorm from class the night he died, seeing peace signs drawn in chalk on the icy bridges and foot-paths, in the spots where the snow had recently been shoveled. Some said, “Give Peace A Chance”. I wondered what was going on. When I arrived, my neighbor said, “John Lennon was shot”. His face was serious and pale. People were crying. We went downstairs to the communal television to find out more. Later, hundreds of people appeared on the “diag” (the center of campus) and held a candle-light vigil in his honor.

John Lennon represented an era of peace and equality, which was pushed out in 1980 by a new era of untempered consumerism and greed, most notably espoused by the new President Ronald Reagan. For the first time in two decades, the fraternity/sorority scene was re-emerging on campus, and students were wearing lots of gold jewelry instead of puca shells and seed-beads. Conspicuous consumption was suddenly in; tie dyes and cut-offs were out. The daily news spoke of “peace through arms” and “trickle down economics” — vastly different sentiments than the post-Vietnam war “love is all you need” and “give peace a chance” messages they replaced.

I remember the murder of John Lennon as the day the world turned upside down. I won’t go into my immediate suspicions (a conspiracy theory) about how this talented messenger of peace was slain outside the home he shared with his wife and his young child. I grieved John Lennon’s death then as I do now —  as a symbol of our collective destroyed innocence — a time when the military-industrial complex squashed and conquered the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. His murder felt like a slap in the face to my generation and to those just a few years older  than me — “Screw your dreams of peace and equality and needing nothing except love. A new time has come.”

And yet, his music lives on. They can take away our heroes, but they can’t take away our dreams and our convictions. Where there is truth, it doesn’t really matter who speaks it.

I’m curious. What are your thoughts?