1968 – George Jung                                 Home

                                  His life was immortalized in the movie “Blow”

In February of 68 I graduated from the U. of Illinois with a BS in Electrical Engineering and a BA in mathematics and took a job at Northrup Nortronics in L.A. I rented an apartment near the beach in Manhattan Beach. It was a basement type efficiency with a kitchenette and a space big enough for a couch between the kitchenette and the small bedroom.When you exited you walked up about 4 steps to the street level. If you looked out the living room window you could see about up to people's knees as they walked by on the sidewalk.

Politically I still had a strong resentment about the Kennedy Assassination and the war and felt that marijuana should be legalized. I saw an ad in the local paper about the “Peace and Freedom Party” and started attending their meetings. They were opposed to the war and for legalization of marijuana so I was pretty enthused. At one of the meetings California politician Alan Cranston's son attended our meeting. One night I accompanied the head of the party as we went door to door proselytizing. One Sunday several of us went to the pier and got signatures on petitions to lower the voting age to 18.

Meanwhile my landlady had told me that I was a good tenant and that she would prefer to continue renting to me but that she had some young kids coming from back east to rent the apartment and they had signed a lease. I had to move out at the end of May.When I moved out of the basement apartment on the beach, I rented a motel in downtown Northrup to be near to my job until I could find an apartment. (Which I did in July near the Coliseum)

The first weekend after I moved out I went back to the beach to see who had gotten my apartment. As I walked up this young man was sitting near the steps going down into the basement apartment and I stopped to talk to him. I asked him if he was moving in and he said 'yes.' I told him that I had just moved out.

I introduced myself and he said his name was George. He asked me if I knew where he could get some marijuana. I told him that I hadn't smoked any since I had been out there but I had smoked in college and told him about my involvement with the Peace and Freedom party which was for legalizing marijuana. I went into a short rap about why it should be legalized and I could see George was pretty excited about that prospect.

I then told him that there was some smoking that I had seen on the beach. Particularly this one girl who was sitting on the beach alone quite often facing the ocean smoking a joint. As we were talking this overweight kid came running back from the beach whistling at the young women walking by and joined us. While standing there talking to them I learned that he was George's roommate. George told him that I had just moved out and wanted to legalize marijuana. George said there was a girl who was going to be living there also that I assumed was his girlfriend. After a few minutes I said goodbye and left.

Several days after meeting George, Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel and I drove down there and hung around out front of the hotel for awhile waiting for some word about his condition. Added onto his brother's death this just further eroded my trust in authority.

See George Jung-2