Forty years is a long time, and though much has changed since 1967, it's amazing to see just how many things sound so eerily familiar.

Flipping through October and November 1967 issues of The Attleboro Sun was indeed an eye-opener for this editor, who was just 4 years old in '67.

Supporters of Bush and his Iraq policies take note.

The lead headline in on Oct. 21, 1967 read: "6,000 troops sent to Pentagon, 700,000 expected to attend anti-war rally".

The lead headline in the Nov. 15 edition of The Sun read: "Westmoreland tells president Vietnam War situation 'encouraging'." The next day, Nov. 16, the lead headline read: "Johnson terms progress in war 'pleasing'".

History, of course, would prove Westmoreland and Johnson tragically wrong.

Then there's a pre-Thanksgiving Day story about a guy named Dale Hopkinson, an Attleboro airman who was seriously injured in Vietnam but made it home to take in the annual T-Day Attleboro-North Attleboro football matchup from a stretcher on the sidelines.

I have no idea where Hopkinson is today but I do know that he and another soldier survived a horrific attack by Viet Cong snipers in August 1967. Hopkinson, who was 21 at the time, found himself cornered by the enemy and had to flee through an open field surrounded by snipers. He suffered severe motor and shrapnel injuries, the report says.

And then there's a biting editorial by the editorial board of The Sun that read: "To write off the whole anti-war movement as a transient social aberration ... is to ignore the basic idealism that motivates a significant number of the demonstrations."

The times, as Bob Dylan sang years earlier, were truly a-changing.

The one happy note in all this was that the injured airman's Thanksgiving wish came true.

Hopkinson, a 1963 graduate of Attleboro High School who was a member of the school's football team, predicted AHS would trounce North on the holiday. They did, 30-0, breaking a three-year holiday losing streak.

And Hopinkson, thankfully, was finally home to see it all.

Craig Borges is assistant managing editor for news at The Sun Chronicle. Contact him at 508-236-0337 or at cborges@thesunchronicle.com.