Hi and welcome to the forum - Clyde and I were both baptized in 1959 and we lived through it all. We remember the buzz when the book came out in 1966, "Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God" which showed the 1,000 year reign beginning in 1975. We remember the two weeks of the Watchtower study in 1968 that highly suggested that 1975 was the year. We remember the talks by the circuit overseer stating that the Society was NOT wrong about 1914 and they WILL NOT be wrong about 1975. However, there was also a lot of confusion because occasionally there would be a talk about how we are "not serving for a date" and the talk would seem to minimize the possibility of 1975 being significant. I believe that many of the witnesses who now claim that the Society did not advocate 1975 will use those talks to support it.
Interestingly, Clyde made the comment that there must be some real conflict at Bethel. I found out two decades later, after reading "Crisis of Conscience" by Raymond Franz, that there really was a lot of dissension. It was Ray's uncle, Fred Franz, who was chiefly responsible for the 1975 fiasco.