In the spring of 1966, I said goodbye to my soft-spoken Canadian 5th-grade teacher Miss Janz and that next fall said hello to Mrs. Ehlers (Ehler the yeller). This was the beginning of my last year at Katherine L. Gust Elementary School.

It may be due more to my age or personal circumstances at the time, but I always think of 1966 as a year of change.

The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Flintstones (the first animated series with a prime-time slot) both ended their series that year while Star Trek and Batman began their first.

Gemini missions #7 through #12 occurred in 1966, ending the Gemini program and paving the way for the Apollo program to put a man on the moon.

Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California for the first time. Walt Disney passed away in December of that year.

Richard Speck was captured and put on trial for the murder of seven nurses in Chicago.

The American Football League and the National Football League merged in 1966, the first Superbowl to be played the following year.

The United States and the Soviet Union were in the middle of the Cold War. Relations had thawed somewhat, but it had been a mere four years since Kennedy and Khrushchev had faced off in the October missile crisis.

Adding to the worries of unintentional war was the crash of a SAC B-52 bomber with a tanker during its mid-aid refueling, resulting in the accidental dropping of three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs over Palomares, Spain.

Despite the regular news reports of increasing turbulence at home, race riots and protests against the Vietnam War, I still remember 1966 as a good year. But the winds of change seemed to whisper that darker days lay ahead.

In the middle of 1966, United Artists released the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. I continue to watch this delightful movie year after year.

I learned the other day (as I was watching it yet again) that it was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and that it is the only movie listed in the Congressional Record. The New York Times had called it “a rousingly funny – and perceptive – motion picture about a desperately unfunny world situation.”

I noted that almost all of the actors and actresses have passed away – Carl Reinter, Alan Arkin, Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters, Paul Ford, Theodore Bikel, John Phillip Law, Ben Blue. Noticeably absent from this list is Eva Marie Saint. Born July 4, 1924, she today celebrates her 100th birthday.

So, a Happy Birthday to Eva and a Happy Independence Day to everyone else.