A TIME OF CHANGE AND DIVERSITY,
w.
1955-1996
eber County residents over time have reflected on their lives and personal status; and some, with questions about the changes around them and the uncertainty of the future, have felt, as Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, that "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This has been especially true in the four decades from 1955 to 1996. After the Korean War the world changed a great deal, and these changes were felt in Weber County. The age of relative innocence was lost and people in the United States faced a world of Cold War tension and economic change. The Korean War had done much to cause Americans to lose their confidence that they were a favored nation or a chosen people—they had come out of that war doubting that they had won a battle for good. The following Vietnam War continued that trend and even more divided the nation over the question of whether the United States should be involved in that war. In the end, the country withdrew from the war without any sense of victory and very much shaken and disrupted by the experience. Many Weber county men and women served in this war; many died and others came home wounded in both body and soul. 308
