Vermont
How 1975 sparked the state Vermonters are in today – VTDigger
When 82-year-old George Aiken retired to his Putney home in 1975 after a lifelong political career as a state representative, speaker of the House, lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. senator, the man who chose green for the color of Vermont’s license plates and coined the term “Northeast Kingdom” dismissed all the accolades.
“The nation will survive,” the now late officeholder dryly told the Rutland Herald upon his return that Jan. 3.
But historians, knowing Aiken held boyhood memories of a turn-of-the-20th-century horseback rider hollering that President William McKinley had been assassinated, knew it was the end of an era.
And the beginning of another.
“My birthplace has been torn down, and there’s a $7 million marker over it — call it Route 91,” Aiken told this reporter in 1982. Harboring no ill will, he proclaimed at its Putney opening in 1961, “We’re on the verge of the greatest development Vermont has ever seen.”
A half-century after Aiken’s retirement, the slow, steady caterpillar of a state he knew has experienced a metamorphosis.
“Vermont’s national political image was that of ‘Silent Cal’ (the nickname of President Calvin Coolidge), its literature was that of Robert Frost, and its music was represented by ‘Moonlight in Vermont,’” longtime journalist Chris Graff recalled at a recent Vermont Humanities talk. “Today its political image is that of Bernie (Sanders), its literature is that of Julia Alvarez, its music is represented by Phish, Grace Potter and now by Noah Kahan.”
“It’s my belief,” Graff summed up, “that no other state has changed as much as Vermont has in these 50 years.”
For those not around in 1975, newspapers of the time chronicle how people plugged into television (“Wheel of Fortune” debuted that Jan. 6), movies (“Jaws” premiered in June to beget the “summer blockbuster”) and landline telephones (both rotary-dial models and, as New England’s then-sole provider unveiled that fall, push-button ones).
Few paid attention to reports that a 19-year-old named Bill Gates had just dropped out of Harvard University to join a friend in creating a seemingly sci-fi micro-computer software company they’d call “Microsoft,” or that the journal “Science” had sprung a new term in an even more headshaking piece titled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
Graff, for his part, would graduate from Middlebury College that spring, then take a $120-a-week journalism job to begin a three-decade career reporting for such statewide outlets as the Associated Press and Vermont Public Television. He remembers when, with the final sections of Interstate 91 under construction, the old adage “you can’t get there from here” was about to be put out to pasture.
“Vermont is closer to the world today than it ever has been,” Graff said. “We are still small, we’re still rural, but we’re no longer completely divorced from the rest of the country. We’re no longer at the end of the pipeline. The interstate brought Vermont closer. The internet has completed that change.”
This new year, history reveals, may be the start of another new era.
‘Watching and waiting’
Jan. 1, 1975, began with big political news: The New Year’s Day convictions of former President Richard Nixon’s onetime attorney general, chief of staff and domestic adviser for covering up the Watergate political scandal that forced their boss to resign the year before.
“This moves us close to the final chapter of this unhappy episode in American history,” Senate Watergate Committee Vice Chair Howard Baker was quoted on the front page of the next day’s Burlington Free Press, then Vermont’s largest paper.
The Free Press and its main competitors at the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus expanded their Monday-to-Saturday coverage 50 years ago by launching Sunday editions, all which previewed the state’s 1976 introduction of a March presidential primary.
“The presidential hopeful seen most prominently thus far in Vermont has been former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, whose strategy of building an early lead in the Democratic presidential race is keyed to winning in early primary states like New Hampshire, Florida and perhaps Vermont,” the Herald and Times Argus reported Nov. 2, 1975.
For its part, WCAX, the state’s largest yet once-limited television station, added a southern transmitter that year to beam into Bennington County (and, tapping cable, into Windham County in 1983). But Vermonters weren’t necessarily eager for more ways to learn how the future would unfold.
“A University of Vermont psychologist sees this nation at the beginning of a new year ‘watching and waiting, not knowing in what direction it is going,’” the Free Press reported Jan. 2, 1975. “Americans, said Dr. George W. Albee, former president of the American Psychological Association, ‘sense that the world is drifting, that things are out of control and no one knows what must be done to fix them.’”
Aiken’s successor in the U.S. Senate understood that sentiment.
“I find that people have very much the same concerns no matter where they live in the state of Vermont, no matter what their political affiliations are,” Patrick Leahy said in a 1974 campaign film. “They’re not satisfied with the way Congress has been acting. They feel the economy is getting out of hand and it’s hurting people.”
Leahy, then 34, was the first Vermont Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate, winning a dozen years after Philip Hoff claimed the same distinction as governor. Residents today may think of the state as a seedbed for progressive politics. But before Hoff and Leahy, it was the only one in the nation to have supported the top of every Republican ticket — Nixon included — since the Grand Old Party’s founding in 1854.
“The bond between Vermont and the Republican Party made a lot of sense at the time,” Graff said. “It was formed out of a dislike for slavery and a belief in the sanctity of the union of states. Vermonters stood firmly behind the party of Abraham Lincoln, and over the years that commitment, cemented by the Civil War, was strengthened by a belief that the Republican philosophy meshed well with small-town, rural life.”
But that loyalty changed after Watergate and the arrival of back-to-the-landers with more liberal views. Graff would move to the state capital of Montpelier to cover the GOP’s eventual loss of its legislative majority when Democrats won the House in 1986 and the Senate in 1996.
“We think of Vermont as now this dominant Democratic state,” the journalist said, “but that’s really pretty recent for those of us who actually have a longer perspective.”
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George “Hap” Pierce refuses literature from Liberty Union Party candidate Bernie Sanders during a campaign stop in Bennington in 1976. Photo by Rob Woolmington/Bennington Banner
‘This statistic should not be surprising’
The state’s image over the past half-century has changed in other ways. Take the story of Sabra Field. In 1975, the then 40-year-old aspiring artist received a big break when the Vermont Bicentennial Commission, preparing to mark the nation’s 200th birthday the next year, selected one of her posters for exhibit in Washington, D.C.
Field, set to celebrate her 90th birthday this April, didn’t know her prints depicting red barns and blue skies would go on to become synonymous with the Green Mountain State, landing on the cover of Vermont Life magazine, an annual namesake calendar and, most famously, nearly 180 million postage stamps.
Childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield can tell a similar tale. The two, born within four days of each other in March 1951, went their separate ways in 1975 when Greenfield met his future wife, according to the book “Ben & Jerry’s: The Inside Scoop.” They didn’t know they’d reunite two years later, split the $5 tuition for a correspondence course in ice cream making and create what’s now heralded as a “multibillion-dollar” company.
Or consider the even longer, stranger trip of Sanders. Fifty years ago, he was a thirtysomething also-ran who had lost a 1974 bid for U.S. Senate under the banner of the alternative Liberty Union Party. Leahy, his opponent, felt so unthreatened, he encouraged his son to babysit Sanders’ 4-year-old during one debate.
As Leahy wrote in his 2022 memoir: “In the thick of a campaign, it was one of those rare genuine win-wins: competitors, never enemies; just two dads coming up with a solution that, coincidentally, would make the little ones in both families happier for avoiding having to fidget and sit through 90 minutes of politics.”
Sanders would join Leahy in the Senate in 2007. But in 1975, the onetime fringe candidate (bagging just 4% of the vote the year before) explored legal action against WCAX for not granting his party airtime to rebut Democratic and Republican messages.
“Bernard Sanders,” the Bennington Banner reported that Sept. 25, “called the denial ‘grossly unfair,’ and said he has asked the Federal Communications Commission for clarification of the so-called ‘fairness doctrine’ governing equal time on controversial issues.”
Unable to respond on television, Sanders turned to letters to the editor.
“According to the latest study done by the Federal Reserve Board,” he wrote in one published by the Banner that Dec. 9, “90% of all state and local tax-exempt bonds are held by the wealthiest 1% of the population. This statistic should not be surprising in light of the fact that 2% of the American population owns one-third of the nation’s wealth and 80% of all publicly held stock.”
Sound familiar? Not all thoughts of a half-century ago have aged so well. The University of Vermont released a report in 1975 that called the nearly completed interstate “overbuilt and underused,” researcher Benjamin Huffman wrote in “Getting Around Vermont.”
“The volume of traffic per mile of Vermont interstate highway,” Huffman continued in a Herald and Times Argus commentary that Oct. 12, “was only one-third the national average and one-fourth the New England regional average.”
Since then, the state’s population has risen 35% from a 1975 count of 479,713 to a current estimate of 648,493, according to the U.S. census — an increase second only to the 242% leap Vermont saw in the five decades after its founding in 1791.
“When I look back at this half-century, what stands out for me is the surge of development — and the state’s response,” Graff said. “Throughout this 50-year period, we’ve seen governors grapple with this tension between economic development and environmental protection, really trying to find that point of how much development can we handle?”
The question, he said, still awaits an answer.
 campaigns for the U.S. Senate in November 1974 with then Gov. Thomas Salmon (left) and Brattleboro state Rep. Timothy O’Connor (right). Photo by J. M. Soper/Brattleboro Reformer
” data-image-caption=”<p>Patrick Leahy (center) campaigns for the U.S. Senate in November 1974 with then Gov. Thomas Salmon (left) and Brattleboro state Rep. Timothy O’Connor (right). Photo by J. M. Soper/Brattleboro Reformer
” data-medium-file=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-300×225.jpg” data-large-file=”https://i3.wp.com/vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1200×900.jpg?crop=1&ssl=1″ fifu-data-src=”https://i3.wp.com/vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1200×900.jpg?crop=1&ssl=1″ alt=”Three men in suits converse in a room; one sits drinking from a cup, while the other two stand, engaged in discussion. A Coca-Cola machine is visible in the background.” class=”wp-image-610748″ srcset=”https://i3.wp.com/vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1200×900.jpg?crop=1&ssl=1 1200w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-300×225.jpg 300w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-125×94.jpg 125w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-768×576.jpg 768w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1536×1152.jpg 1536w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-2048×1536.jpg 2048w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-800×600.jpg?crop=1 800w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-600×450.jpg?crop=1 600w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-400×300.jpg?crop=1 400w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-200×150.jpg?crop=1 200w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1024×768.jpg 1024w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-1568×1176.jpg 1568w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-2000×1500.jpg 2000w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/VTD-1975-4-706×529.jpg 706w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px”><figcaption class=)
Patrick Leahy (center) campaigns for the U.S. Senate in November 1974 with then Gov. Thomas Salmon (left) and Brattleboro state Rep. Timothy O’Connor (right). Photo by J. M. Soper/Brattleboro Reformer
‘What the solutions would be’
Finally, there’s the story of the former seventh-grader forced to go to the bureaucratic bore of Montpelier at the start of 1975 to see his father elected Vermont’s first Democratic speaker of the House.
Back then, I wasn’t interested in the significance of Timothy O’Connor winning in a chamber with a shrinking Republican majority, or the selection of my dad’s fellow legislators (and future governors) Richard Snelling as GOP leader, James Douglas as his assistant and Madeleine Kunin as Democratic whip.
As a reporter 50 years later, I’m now witnessing the once-new infrastructure of my youth overwhelmed by an unprecedented flood of demands, be it for state education funding, health care, stormwater drainage or safety nets for people struggling with poverty, mental health, alcohol or drugs.
Plainfield Town Clerk Bram Towbin summed up the situation after record rain in 2024 destroyed an estimated $1 million in local property — or about 10% of the town’s grand list: “The system is not designed for this.”
Graff, now retired, acknowledges the deluge of challenges.
“There’s a reason all of this hasn’t really been solved,” he said in an interview. “It is incredibly difficult.”
Many residents are looking to the Legislature, set to convene this month, for some sort of fix. But Graff notes that advances such as Vermont’s first-in-the-nation civil unions (the 2000 precursor to same-sex marriage) came only after the state Supreme Court ruled that everyone was entitled to the same rights and protections and ordered lawmakers to make it happen.
“Throughout Vermont history, there have been a number of issues that have been so controversial that action only came when the courts stepped in and forced it,” he said.
The state’s relatively small number of residents adds to the complications, as Graff notes the count is about the same as that of Portland, Oregon.
“We have a population that’s equal to a city and yet we’re required to do everything a state does,” he said. “How do you do all this when you don’t have the financial base to do it?”
Graff cites a quote from life coach Tony Robbins: “Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”
“I think there are answers,” Graff said, “and the answers are painful. You reach that tipping point when seeing the homelessness, the school inequities and the infrastructure problems that are out there becomes more painful than what the solutions would be — which, in many cases, are going to be additional taxes.”
Even so, Graff holds out hope. The journalist remembers covering his first Vermont gubernatorial inauguration a half-century ago when he spotted the chief executive set to take office, Thomas Salmon, walking to the Statehouse.
“What surprised me,” Graff recalled, “was there was no entourage.”
This month, newly reelected Gov. Phil Scott is set to follow suit in exactly the same way. For all its growth and change, Graff said, Vermont remains “of human scale.”
“I think that’s the greatest thing we have going for us,” he concluded. “We have neighborhoods. We have communities. We have a better chance than anywhere in the country to still forge solutions.”
Born Feb. 16, 1992
Burlington, Vermont
Died Sept. 21, 2025
Tucson, Arizona
Details of services
A memorial service in Burlington will be announced at a later date.
Jordan passed away on September 21, 2025, in Tucson, AZ. He was born in Burlington, VT, on February 16, 1992, where he lived until moving with his family to Tucson in 2003. Jordan graduated from Canyon del Oro High School in Tucson and then attended Denison University in Granville, OH.
From his youth, Jordan was a voracious reader and had an active, wide-ranging intellect. He could be seen, with a travel mug of tea in hand, walking to his elementary school, lost in the book held close to his face. With his ever-curious mind he preferred self-learning over formal education and enjoyed the camaraderie and competition of the extracurricular spelling bee team in grade school and the Academic Decathlon in high school. While at Denison Jordan was pursuing a major in Classical Studies and worked in the Online Communications department.
While growing up in Vermont, Jordan had fun outdoors during all the seasons. He loved camping, alpine skiing, playing hockey on the backyard rink, and adventures with his 4-H club. Memorable trips were ice fishing on the lake and an overnight stay in the mountains in a handmade snow shelter, both in subzero temps. Some months after moving to the Sonoran Desert, Jordan remarked that “Arizona has two seasons, summer and hell.” But he had adapted to the heat by then, having found relief at the neighborhood pool where he joined the swim team and quickly made a new group of friends. Through his Tucson 4-H club and a youth program with the AZ Game and Fish Department, he continued shooting skeet, trap, and sporting clays, a sport he first practiced in Vermont. Jordan found more friends and mentors at the Tucson range and excelled in competitions in and out of the state, ultimately becoming a certified referee. In high school he trained in ninjitsu, outdoors, year round. As a freshman at Denison he joined the sailing team and found a new passion competing in regattas around the Midwest, both for his school and on private boats.
After leaving college, Jordan lived and worked in Vermont, San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, and New York City. He was employed in administration and sales at several established companies and in startups. He also worked regularly in hospitality, starting at age 14 in the kitchen of a gelato shop and most recently as a bartender. Jordan was a talented writer, a skill he used in his work settings and in creative, expository, and critical pieces that he published online.
From a young age, Jordan was kind, affectionate, funny and loyal. He enthusiastically affirmed and celebrated his family and friends. His warmth, curiosity, and quick wit served him well, both personally and professionally. He was engaging, approachable, and non-judgmental with friends, roommates, and customers. Jordan was a skilled shopper and enjoyed fine things. He eagerly shared his opinions on bespoke clothing (steam, don’t iron!), gourmet foods, chef’s knives (stone sharpen!), literature, and opera (Maria Callas!). He was equally cozy with fast food, dive bars, trendy music, and dented vehicles.
Jordan had a heart-felt sense of justice. He was troubled by abuses of power and was an advocate for victims of systemic oppression. The suffering caused by police brutality, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and civil war in Yemen weighed heavily on his mind. He yearned for a world with more compassion, equity, and tolerance. We honor Jordan’s memory when we embrace these values and act on our moral convictions.
Jordan’s personal suffering was deeper than many of us knew and his death by suicide is a heartbreaking and devastating loss to many. Our immense grief reflects our deep love and care for him. His absence from our lives will be an ongoing sorrow but memories of his universal empathy, off-beat humor, and clever commentary will continue to make us smile and keep his spirit alive.
Jordan is survived by his mother, Michelle Mraz (Rob Backus) of Burlington; his father, Mitchell H. Kurker (Juanita) of Tucson; his brother; his grandmother, Frances Kurker of Tucson, and many aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. He was predeceased by his grandparents, Margaret and Charles Mraz of Middlebury, VT, and his grandfather, Mitchell A. Kurker, of Tucson.
If you would like to make a contribution in Jordan’s memory, please consider your local library, center for the arts, or agency for mental health services.
Jordan’s family is grateful to those who have expressed their sympathy and provided comfort and support since his passing. Thank you.
(Photo taken by Jordan, April 2022. If you look closely at the signs you will see a message that is helpful to those who are grieving him.)
The Green Mountain State is home to a quaint combination of vintage towns, agriculture, and public land for the outdoor recreator. The state’s tallest peak, Mount Mansfield, offers spectacular mountain views on your journey to the top, and the view from the summit is nothing short of magical. At the trail, natural beauty begins in the dappled light as you wander through northern hardwood forests. The scenic trail then rises through higher evergreen fir forests, until breaking through to rare alpine-tundra where 360-degree views of the state roll out beneath you. Once you’re in the alpine section of the mountain, be sure to only walk on the rocks to protect this fragile ecosystem.
Trails in Underhill State Park start at around 2,000 feet and take you up to Mount Mansfield’s summit of 4,395 feet. It’s one of the most scenic hiking experiences in New England, regardless of the season. Fall can make for soggy boots, but the maple, beech, and birch trees blanketing the mountain’s lower elevations are ablaze in autumn color from about mid-September to mid-October. A selection of hike-in campsites in the park makes for some great fall camping spots this time of year. For those seeking a blend of challenge, beauty, and solitude, heading up in winter provides a memorable experience — you might need snowshoes, skis, crampons, or poles depending on what route you take. Spring is known as mud season in the Northeast, though it can still be a stunning scene as the hardwood forests begin to show supple, bright green baby leaves while understory flowers break through the debris. Summer in Vermont is hard to beat, though, and it’s easily the best time of year to head to Mount Mansfield. Blitz up this peak, rinse off in one of the area’s swimming holes, and stop by a sugar shack for maple soft serve ice cream on your way through the nearby town of Stowe.
Trails to hike up Mount Mansfield
It’s always a good idea to plan and prepare properly for any day hike like this one. Mount Mansfield is a noodle bowl of trails, and you need to spend a few minutes before setting out deciding which one you’re going to attempt. The summit ridge runs north to south, and its ridgeline features resemble a person’s profile on their back (nose, chin, forehead, Adam’s apple). Vermont’s iconic state-long thru-hike, called the Long Trail, traverses the summit ridge. If you start at the Lower Barnes Lot, you can hike the Long Trail to the Adam’s apple and across the ridgeline, then descend via the Hazleton Trail for a hike that totals 7.8 miles.
Approaching through Underhill State Park, on the mountain’s western side, is ideal because it’s the more remote and undeveloped side. Several classic routes lead toward the summit ridge, including the Sunset Ridge Trail, a 3-mile approach that offers a steady climb and some of the best open ridgeline views in the state. Others take the Laura Cowles Trail, a steeper and shadier route that ascends through moss-covered forest and meets the ridge above the treeline. Looped together, these trails create a perfect 4.5-mile blend of demanding hiking and tranquil scenery.
Whichever trail you take, the ultimate reward of hiking Mt. Mansfield via Underhill is the moment you break through the treeline, where the summit ridge opens into sweeping views. Lake Champlain lies to the west, the Green Mountains continue to the north and south, and on clear days, even the White Mountains of New Hampshire peek out over the horizon. Returning via the Sunset Ridge Trail offers regular vistas of the valley below, aglow with sunset colors if timed right. It’s a nice distraction from your burning thighs and achy feet.
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