He Was First in Line at the World’s Fair 60 Years Ago

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll catch up with the first person to go through the gate at the 1964 New York World’s Fair — 60 years ago.

Credit…Graham Dickie/The New York Times

There are things about his big day 60 years ago that William Turchyn does not remember:

• The theme of the sprawling event he went to (“Peace through understanding”).

• What he paid to get in. (Probably $2, or about $20 in today’s dollars.)

• Exactly how long he waited to get in. (At least a couple of days. Forty-one hours, according to The Associated Press.)

He was an 18-year-old college freshman who waited on the far side of a turnstile with a couple of his roommates. They wanted to be the first people to go into the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.

Turchyn led the way, after a ribbon-cutting ceremony — he was given a snippet of the ribbon, he said. Then came the rush into “the great big beautiful tomorrow” that had been built inside, as a song lyric described it. Turchyn and his roommates