This December will be my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. My siblings and I have decided to throw a surprise party for them. My sister has taken responsibility for stealing their address book to get the guest list, I’m going to make a scrapbook for them, and my brother is taking charge of getting the location.
So far so good. However, we are stuck for what to do at the party. So far, the only thing we’ve come up with is trying to do a 1961 theme, but, frankly, it wasn’t much of a memorable year.
Does anyone have any suggestions, things that they have done for anniversaries, things they have seen done, things they strongly recommend avoiding? My parents are pretty low-key, they aren’t going to do anything extreme, but we would really like to make this a memorable ocasion for them.
JFK’s inauguration (instantly lending itself to a Camelot theme) and the Bay of Pigs aren’t memorable?
Beginning of Peace Corps.
Little Rock public schools open with 46 blacks in predominately white schools. Twenty-three of the black students are in junior high schools.
The East German government seals off West Berlin from East Germany with what later grows into the Berlin Wall. Intense diplomatic protests by many western nations are ignored by the East Germans.
UN Secretary General Hammarsjkold dies in an air crash at Ndola, Zambia.
Yuri Gagarin (U.S.S.R.) orbits the earth
Alan Shepard makes first U.S. space flight.
U.S. Civil War Centennial
101 Dalmatians
West Side Story (Movie, not the Broadway play)
El Cid
Tennessee Williams’s play Night of the Iguana produced on Broadway.
Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land published.
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
First legal publication in U.S. of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer
Pop songs:
Love Makes the World Go Round
Moon River
Where the Boys Are
Exodus
Yogi Bear gets his own cartoon series.
One big recommendation (or suggested prohibition).
Whatever you select, make the premise an evening out and have the event away from their home. There are few things more annoying than having well-wishers pop in unexpectedly when the dishes aren’t done, the carpet needs to be vacuumed, and you’re sitting around in your most comfortable (and least presentable) clothes.