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By DAVE JANOSKI and TOYA STEWART; Times Leader Staff Writers
Sunday, August 25, 1996     Page: 1A

Things would never be the same after ’68.
   
The personal and the political.
    The mores and the music.
   
Everything was being turned upside down in a year filled with
assassinations, urban rioting, racial strife and a widening gulf between the
generations.
   
In August of that year, newly widowed Lucille Maziarz, of Duryea, flying in
a plane for the first time, and Shickshinny dry cleaner Sergio Bartoli landed
at 1968’s ground zero, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
   
The convention, with its Vietnam-inspired battles in the streets and on the
convention floor, would leave both first-time delegates with a taste for
politics that would last the rest of their lives.
   
But their first impression of Chicago in 1968 was fear.
   
Anti-war protesters mobbed the delegates’ bus as it pulled up to the Conrad
Hilton. Hands reached out to pull the credentials hanging from Bartoli’s neck.
   
“The crowd blocked the entrances to the hotel and they were trying to stop
us to persuade us to change our votes,” said Bartoli, a Hubert Humphrey
delegate. “They stole the credentials to gain access to the convention hall.
   
“I came from a small town. Nothing like that would ever happen here. It was
quite exciting,” said Bartoli, 82. ” The youth, the boys with long hair and
the girls, were rebelling.”
   
Thousands flocked to Chicago to protest the majority Democrats’ Vietnam War
policy in 1968. Hundreds were injured or arrested.
   
Chicago police, National Guardsmen and a chain-link fence surrounded the
International Amphitheatre, where the convention was held.
   
“I was interviewed on national television by (NBC news correspondent) John
Chancellor,” Maziarz said. “I remember telling him I was frightened coming
into Chicago, but once I saw the security we had, I wasn’t scared at all.”
   
The delegates, escorted from their hotel to the convention hall by Illinois
National Guardsmen, were sheltered from much of what was going on in the
streets of Chicago. As the confetti flew inside the amphitheater, city police
were outside clubbing and gassing protesters, who responded with rocks and
bottles.
   
“We saw it on television,” said Maziarz, an alternate delegate who backed
Humphrey, the vice president and eventual nominee who lost to Richard Nixon.
Maziarz said she had some sympathy for the protesters, even though they
vilified Humphrey for his policy of continuing the war.
   
“They made a collection to get these kids released from prison. We all made
contributions.”
   
The national divide over the Vietnam War was reflected in the local
delegation representing the 11th Congressional District.
   
The 11th’s four elected delegates, including Bartoli, voted to insert a
call for an American withdrawal from Vietnam in the party platform. The two
delegates appointed by the Democratic State Committee, state Sen. Martin L.
Murray and former county party chairman James J. Law, both now deceased,
supported a plank calling for an “honorable and lasting peace” and rejecting a
unilateral withdrawal.
   
The latter plank prevailed 1,567 to 1,041 after two hours of debate. Some
of the anti-war delegates donned black armbands and sang “We Shall Overcome”
until they were drowned out by the convention band playing “Happy Days Are
Here Again.”
   
Changed lives
   
But for all the rancor of Chicago in that election year, both Bartoli and
Maziarz look back on the convention as a turning point in their lives. It
turned Maziarz from a political neophyte into a party loyalist.
   
Maziarz hadn’t been very active in politics before she was widowed, “except
to be with my husband when he went to these political affairs, I tagged
along.”
   
Edward Maziarz, who had an insurance and real estate business, was running
for an alternate delegate’s slot when he died in 1968.
   
“They couldn’t take his name off the ballot,” his wife recalled. “When a
couple of people wrote in to the newspapers saying not to vote for him, I got
incensed. I campaigned for him and he won.”
   
After the primary, Maziarz was appointed to the post by the state
Democratic Committee.
   
“I was really new at the time. Did I really know what was going on at the
time? Well, you didn’t have news like you do now.”
   
Maziarz would be elected to the Duryea Borough Council and the Pittston
Area School Board in the years after the 1968 convention. She is a member of
the Democratic state committee and worked in several state jobs after selling
the family business about 15 years ago.
   
She has attended every Democratic convention since 1968 either as a
delegate or party official and will be a delegate committed to President
Clinton at this week’s convention.
   
Maziarz said the delegates in Chicago this year will be better informed
than the ones in 1968.
   
“I’ve been listening to CNN ever since this thing began. I know so much
more about the candidates than I did then. And I think most people do because
of the news media.”
   
This year’s convention will have more of a female presence, thanks to party
rules dating from 1972 that require a roughly equal representation of the
sexes among the delegates. Women delegates were few and far between in 1968.
   
“I was a pioneer,” Maziarz said. “I tried in those years to get the ladies
interested in politics. It’s very difficult for a young woman to get involved
because they’re usually raising children and trying to keep a job. There’s no
time for politics.”
   
Bartoli said his election as a delegate changed his life, even before he
got to Chicago.
   
“One of the highlights was that I became famous in my own little way,” said
Bartoli, a lifelong resident of Shickshinny. “I got bushels of mail and phone
calls from all over the United States.”
   
The correspondence was an attempt to persuade him to be a spokesman for
various issues. Afterwards, he was in demand as a speaker.
   
“I just thought we were going to nominate a candidate for president,” he
said. “I didn’t know there were so many issues.”
   
After the convention, Bartoli returned to Shickshinny and entered the real
estate business. He also became more active in politics. He traveled around
the state to speak, was asked to run for several local offices and served on
the Shickshinny Borough Council.
   
Bartoli has fond memories of the 1968 convention and says he regrets that
he didn’t get involved in politics sooner.
   
“I was shocked to see some of the things that went on in Chicago. It was a
little scary, but I loved every minute of it.”
   
TIMES LEADER/DON CAREY
   
Holding a Humphrey/Muskie sign, Sergio Bartoli called the 1968 Democratic
Convention a little scary, but said he loved every minute of it.
   
AP FILE PHOTO
   
A furious Mayor Richard J. Daley stands at the microphone as shouts resound
through the International Amphitheatre on Aug. 28, 1968, in Chicago, demanding
the Democratic National Convention adjourn until later in the day before
considering the party platform.