I was born in May of the year of our Lord, 1958… Yes, when I have to insert my birthday into a computer form, it is like spinning the wheel on The Price is Right. To be honest, I was really unaware of what was all the rage, going on, and in the news for the year. SO, I googled it… Yes, at my age I can do that!

Let’s see, Google says the Hula Hoop was all the rage, and yes, as a kid later on, I had one of those. It is also the year NASA was founded, and as I grew up, I would also remember when mankind landed on the Moon in 1969. It was the year that Elvis Presley was drafted and went into the Army. Johnny Cash began his prison concerts, and Pizza Hut opened its first restaurant in Kansas. It was also the year we voted for Alaska to gain statehood in the United States, which would occur in 1959. I guess I am a year older than Alaska is a state. This was also the year the first color TV broadcast was made, and President Eisenhower was the first official seen in color!

To give some perspective on how long ago both social and political issues were bubbling and changing… The year 1958 was marked by Cold War tension, space race acceleration ( NASA was formed), Brazil won the World Cup for the first time, and the Fifth Republic was formed in France. Iraq’s monarchy was overthrown, and U.S troops landed in Lebanon. Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic. Khrushchev became Premier in the Soviet Union, and China launched the ambitious but disastrous Great Leap Forward.

But in Griffin, Georgia, in 1958, Dr. John Ellis Jr. and his wife Dorothy welcomed their first child, a daughter… Joni Lynn Ellis was born into the world…