William Marvel: Re-enacting 1960

My mother was the liberal in our house. She was born into a working-class Irish family that voted Democratic, at least from the end of the Populist movement of the 1890s. Her brothers had all belonged to railroad or industrial unions. It was because of her that The Boston Globe started coming to the house in 1960.

My father’s ancestors, meanwhile, had been Democrats in Delaware when that was the conservative party, long before the Civil War. My grandfather carried those inherited principles of self-sufficiency with him when he left the family farm in southern Delaware to work his way through college and medical school, and he passed his political tenets on to his sons. They both pursued careers in the Navy, which only reinforced the conservative doctrine they had learned at home.