My mother once showed me a letter she received from her sister in February 1968, expressing excitement that my mother had begun to study with the JWs. My sister and I would be born later that year. My mother claims that --even back then-- she understood that the WTS wasn't making any definitive predictions. I don't believe that; I think she began the Bible study with them because she believed that the end was imminent.
Interestingly, she did not get baptized until 1977. Did something happen to change her mind between 1968 and 1975? I'll never know, because she rarely talks about that time, and never in-depth. I'd love to know what happened during that time period, but I think those are secrets she will take to the grave. I know that she would immediately reject any information about the JWs that isn't directly from the GB, so there's no sense in pointing out how strongly they pushed the 1975 stuff.
Remember that in 1969 they told young people that it was a "fact" that they would never grow old in the present system of things. And the Kingdom Ministry in Sea Breeze's first post originally stated that there were "months remaining" before the end of the present system of things, then was updated with more ambiguous language. They lied, and they covered it up, and then they blamed the people who had been lied to. They praised the people who sold homes, then admonished them for doing something that had been praiseworthy just a year earlier.
If you claim that God is whispering in your ear but you make big claims that turn out to be false, it must be one of two things: you are imagining that someone is whispering in your ear, or the person whispering in your ear isn't God.