President's Message

Tales from the late 1900s: The Summer of ’76

Jenni Wilson, LMFT, President

50 years ago, I was 5-years-old.  The Summer of ‘76 had been Yankee Doodled to its utmost dandy for the U.S. Bicentennial, and we were feeling it.  Everywhere I looked there were American flags, red, white, & blue fire hydrants, and houses festooned with stars-and-stripes bunting, as seemingly endless parades marched by throughout the year.

It was the late days of Disco and the early days of Yacht Rock listening to the likes of Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine Band, Hall & Oates, Wings, and Fleetwood Mac - sailing away on the blue waters of the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair.  Everyone was BBQ’ing the hell out of those long golden days, Nixon was out, Vietnam was over, and people wanted to feel good about this nation again. My undiagnosed unmedicated ADHD barely-out-of-kindergarten self was taking the Pepsi challenge and mainlining processed foods, while inhaling second-hand smoke in the backseat of our Ford Fiesta, with the windows rolled down for summer, no car seats and no seatbelts.  We seemed to be living an American Dream.

Bicentennial Chic was pervasive and almost cult-like.  The country’s fascination with the simpler times of Little House on the Prairie in the mid-seventies invited in the commercialization of a frontier folksy aesthetic.  Women began wearing calico or gingham dresses in bohemian silhouettes made of breathable fabrics, stepping away from the polyester mod of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s.  A surge of idealized American Revolution iconography was seeping into the far corners of fashion and interior design with a fevered Patriotism, perhaps meant to distract the disillusioned Vietnam vets and aging hippies who were struggling to reacclimate to some aspirational idea of suburban safety and conformity they were being sold.

A bit short-sighted, IMHO, neighbors of ours decorated their entire home in bold Early American Revival, with red-white-and-blue shag carpets throughout, and a variety of wall papers covered in sketched images like cannons, the Liberty Bell, and giant Eagles holding banderoles reading “E Pluribus Unum”.  The rooms were all filled with selections from Ethan Allen’s colonial collection, accent tables with thick spindle legs, and conversation pieces like a convex Girandole Mirror, a butter churn, and toy soldiers peppered throughout.  The house truly possessed a neurodiverse splendor I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.

In 1976, the first class of women were initiated into the naval academy, and every adult I encountered was telling me I could grow up to be ANYTHING I wanted to be some day.  “You could even be President!”, they’d say – although no female had ever been President at the time.  At 5-years-old I had no idea what an impossible dream the adults were pushing onto me.

And there was so much to be hopeful about.  Three years earlier women won the right to choose, more recent than that women had been “granted” the right to apply for their own credit cards without needing a man to co-sign, and with prominent women like Shirley Chisholm and Betty Ford supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, it seemed inevitable that it would be ratified by all 50 states before the deadline in 1979. The future DID look bright to the women in my world. What couldn’t we do?

That summer, a progressive candidate from the deep south named Jimmy Carter became the Democratic nominee to run against Ford in the fall, and a 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci inspired every kid under 12 to contort and toss our bodies in unnatural ways, whether we had actually been trained properly or not.  Bruce Jenner won the Decathlon at the same ‘76 Montreal Summer Olympics, and everyone started eating Wheaties just for the box.  Everyone I knew watched Family Feud, What’s Happening!!, The Muppet Show, and Charlie’s Angels - and we were staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live because we weren’t supposed to. 

In ’76, a record-setting heatwave struck the Midwest, and Michigan was no exception.  Many summer afternoons my older sister and I would be dropped off at the Punch & Judy on Kercheval or the Woods theater on Mack with a bunch of other kids whose parents did theater with ours.  We were left all day to watch the Bad News Bears or some random double feature on loop in the air-conditioned spaces, while our parents went to rehearsal, to drink, or to do whatever it was they did that would end their marriages not long after.

When our parents didn’t unload us at the movies, all the kids were at the City Park pool - on our own – until the streetlights came on.  Three-years my senior, my eccentric, brilliant, and creative older sister was tasked with “watching” me - meaning she resentfully dragged me around in my red, white, and blue swimsuit with the rest of this feral pack of 12-and-unders, while she attempted to read adult novels and ignore us.  Occasionally we’d be under the eye of a 16-year-old babysitter named Sue, but most of the time we were out there descending into a Lord-of-the-Flies-like savagery; no sunscreen, hopped up on Faygo Red Pop, stuffing our faces with Hostess cupcakes and bologna sandwiches with wilted lettuce and Miracle Whip, in all our budding Gen X glory.  We were getting used to the sweet terrifying taste of Independence – and in 1976 that was the kind of hands-off childrearing that was shaping our still-nascent prefrontal cortexes.

But as American as it all was, as we ALL were, my sister made sure I was aware that we weren’t just American, we were Mexican-American - because my dad was Mexican. She made sure I understood what it meant that my father was Chicano, why people had such a hard time spelling and pronouncing our last name, and why people looked at us funny when we were out with him sometimes – his resemblance being more like Chico than The Man.

An avid reader beyond her years, my sister also schooled me on Judaism after reading The Chosen, how growing-up in suburbia is actually depressing as hell after reading Ordinary People, and how people can be the anti-Christ, after reading The Exorcist – she turned 9-years-old that summer.  She pointed out the overtly racist Cream of Wheat ad in the aforementioned Bicentennial fanatic’s breakfast nook, wanting me to see how The Great American Experiment was maybe not so great.  My sister contextualized a lot for me early on, emphasizing that the world we experienced on the day-to-day did not reflect the world as it was.  These were important lessons I would understand more deeply in years to come.

I find myself wistfully thinking of those days now, noting how much has changed – or not - in the past 50 years.  July 2026 marks the 250^th Anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and I feel crushing disappointment, with no desire to don that mask of innocent patriotism again. I cannot find the wherewithal to celebrate the dismantling of all I once thought possible and the rolling back of so much progress made.  Instead, I wear the authentic passion of a cis-gender Gen X perimenopausal bisexual Midwestern Californian non-Spanish-speaking Mexican-American Post-Modern 3^rd-Wave Feminist therapist who loves the diversity and collective spirit of this country, in spite of its ugly and dark origins, fervently hoping the power of community and democracy will take down home-grown fascism in my lifetime. I know it’s radical, but I believe that most of us intrinsically want the same things and strive to not be horrible to other people.  Please prove me right.

My wish for any 5-year-olds today is that in 50 years they can look back having enjoyed the freedom of youth this summer of ’26 - free of adult concerns, hatreds, and illusions.  But if they don’t, and most probably won’t, I hope they’ll look back to see that the adults of their youth – the Gen-Xs, Xennials, Millennials, Generation Jones’, and older Gen Z-ers - were able to right the ship before it capsized.  Perhaps this is the impossible dream I’m pushing onto them as an adult now, that in 50 years we can create healthier systems to leave this yet-unclaimed already-named Generation Alpha and their children.  Maybe by then a woman will be or will have been President.  I hope I live to see it.  A girl can still dream.

Be safe this July 4^th holiday, stay hydrated, and look out for yourself and those who need looking after.

Paz y Amor,

JJVW - Jenni June Villegas Wilson

Jenni J.V. Wilson, LMFT (she/her): As a collaborative conversationalist passionate about empowering and advocating for marginalized groups and underrepresented voices, Jenni uses an integrative approach based on post-modern principles to provide culturally-mindful and trauma-informed therapeutic services and clinical supervision. She works with creative, anxious, mixed race/culture, and co-dependent clients on improving and eliminating toxic relationships, while increasing authentic expression. She has a BA in theatre from Occidental College, an MA in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University LA, and is trained in EMDR, Brainspotting, and certified in Narrative Therapy. She is an accomplished writer, has produced/co-hosted multiple podcasts, worked in addiction treatment for nearly a decade, and sees the “worried well” in her private practice in Sherman Oaks. Website: www.JenniJVWilson.com