What was going on when I was born?

Within the historic district of Windle Park in Tarrytown, an area distinguished by its Victorian structures, developers are constructing a condominium community that will blend in with the prevailing architectural style. The community, called Whisper Hill on the Hudson, is a 43-unit, two-family-house development set on a bluff north of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

THE Harts and Spoonhours share a tragedy. Each family had a teen-age son who took his own life. Now the two families are speaking out about their experiences with suicide, in the hope that the knowledge could prevent other teen-age deaths. Each year there are 5,000 to 6,000 suicides reported nationwide. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in the 15- to 24-year-old group there were 4,700 suicides during 1983, the latest year for which it has figures. In the Westchester-Rockland-Putnam County area there has been a cluster of teen-age suicides, with 19 reported in the last 18 months. Last week an 18-year-old Mount Vernon girl, Christina Taylor, apparently committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, according to the police. ''There are a lot of people who don't have any awareness that the problem even exists, let alone at this magnitude,'' Anne Spoonhour said. To make parents aware of the warning signs of suicidal teen-agers, Representative Joseph J. DioGuardi introduced a bill that was approved in the House - similar legislation passed in the Senate - and President Reagan proclaimed June as Youth Suicide Prevention Month. Mary and Patrick Hart and Mrs. Spoonhour are scheduled to discuss their sons' deaths as part of a weeklong morning talk program on WVIP radio in Mount Kisco beginning Monday.

Returning anywhere after 46 years is hazardous. Even the most ordinary past sets psychological land mines for the present. Returning to Oz - that Technicolor world of dancing Munchkins over the rainbow, of ruby slippers and winged monkeys and the Wicked Witch of the West - is a booby trap of immense proportions. ''Return to Oz,'' the Walt Disney movie which opens June 21 in 1,300 theaters, including Radio City Music Hall in New York, must do more than compete with an old movie starring Judy Garland that is shown on television once a year. Since it was first shown on television in 1956, M-G-M's 1939 ''The Wizard of Oz'' has become an American artifact, a piece of pop culture as tangible as a pottery shard. Over the last 29 years, ''The Wizard of Oz'' has been seen in 436 million homes. ''Return to Oz'' is neither a remake of M-G-M's ''The Wizard of Oz'' nor - in Hollywood terms - a sequel to that movie. The Dorothy in ''Return to Oz'' is seven years younger than the Dorothy played by 16-year-old Judy Garland. The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion are, at best, peripheral characters. The Wizard does not appear at all. There are no Munchkins. Nor does Dorothy's dog Toto return to Oz. Most importantly, ''Return to Oz'' is not a musical.

The United States has reportedly sent a commando unit to the Mediterranean to be ready to storm the hijacked Trans World Airlines plane if deemed necessary. But American officials said today that they were counting on Algeria and the Red Cross to bring about a nonviolent resolution of the crisis. The officials, who would not confirm the dispatch of the so-called Delta commando unit from Fort Bragg, N.C., said all prudent measures were being taken, including military. Information on the movement of the unit came from other than American sources, but the whereabouts of the team was not disclosed. No Request from Algeria A similar move was made in December, when members from the Delta unit were dispatched to the Mediterranean in case an opportunity arose during the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner to Iran.

Tze-Chung Chen continued setting records with heroic shots and deadly putting today despite a steady, cold rain as the 26-year-old from Taiwan increased his lead to two strokes in the 85th United States Open. Andy North, the winner of the 1978 Open who has not won a tournament since, was in second place, with David Barr of Canada three shots farther back in third place. Chen, who led both the first and second rounds by a single shot, had his third straight sub-par round over the Oakland Hills Country Club course with one-under 69 for 7-under 203 for 54 holes, tying the 54-hole Open record set by George Burns in 1981 at Merion. David Graham won that Open as Burns tied for second.

IN the past year, the police in Connecticut have been looking harder for drunken drivers, and they have been catching more. State and local police officers are using roadblocks, more patrols on weekend nights and a greater sophistication in recognizing drunken drivers to get more drunks off the state's roads. Additional police training has been given, new on-the-spot eye tests are being administered to drivers, and public education has been increased. More arrests have been made, and, according to several officers, the strict enforcement is causing many people to find alternatives to driving while intoxicated. The point of it all is to get drunken drivers off the road before they cause accidents, the police said.

There were further peace efforts in the Middle East last week, but they were all but forgotten in the drama involving a TWA airliner under constant threat of being blown up by its Moslem Shiite hijackers. One passenger was killed in the Beirut airport. The lawlessness that is Lebanon spread to Athens Friday when two Lebanese Shiites seized the Boeing 727 with 153 passengers and crew and forced it fly to Beirut, then to Algiers, in support of demands that Israel free Shiites imprisoned during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. It was the third hijacking in as many days provoked by the Lebanese strife. The first two planes were seized in Beirut in the struggle between Shiites and Palestinians.

German developers are planning a condominium complex overlooking Jackson Square Park in Greenwich Village in the 19th-century style characteristic of the residential and commercial buildings of the neighborhood. Construction is to start in September on a building at the corner of Greenwich and Eighth Avenues that will rise in steps to 15 stories.

FOR the last two years, Vincent's Motel, where earlier this month a 17-year-old high school student was found murdered, has been a source of concern and complaints among residents here. In that period, village police files show, two men staying at the motel were arrested and charged with rape, a motel resident was convicted of disorderly conduct and another was arrested on charges of attempted assault. The police were also called to respond to a burglary at the motel and to a dispute between two of its residents in the same period. Those incidents occurred against a background of suspicion in the village that the motel, which houses some welfare clients and homeless men and women, was frequented by drug users and dealers and that prostitutes were there. Students at Rye Neck High School, which is less than 500 feet from the motel, have complained of being harassed by people staying at the motel.

SUFFOLK County Executive Peter F. Cohalan and the 18-member County Legislature are engaged in a no-holds-barred clash over who holds the ultimate power in county government. At issue is the county's position on the Shoreham nuclear power plant, which now appears further away from opening as a result of the clash and actions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Since the Long Island Lighting Company proposed its construction nearly 20 years ago, the Shoreham plant has been at the center of scores of legal and political battles. None have been more intense, however, than the courtroom scenes of the last two weeks that ended in a ruling by Justice Robert W. Doyle of State Supreme Court in Riverhead. He ruled last Monday that Mr. Cohalan had overstepped his authority when he unilaterally ordered county participation in emergency planning for the $4.2 billion facility.

ALL FALL DOWN America's Tragic Encounter With Iran. By Gary Sick. 366 pp. New York: Random House. $19.95. IN the minds of many Americans, Iran stands second only to Vietnam as a disaster for American foreign policy. The fall of the Shah, America's most powerful ally in the vital Persian Gulf region, and the seizure of Americans whom mobs of ''students'' held captive for 15 months, together constituted a national humiliation of formidable proportions. As usual, it has led to a searing domestic debate about who is to blame. Was Jimmy Carter's human rights policy one of the main reasons for the Shah's demise? Could the Carter Administration have done more to stiffen the Shah's backbone and so prevent the triumph of the fanatically anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini? Should the United States, on the contrary, have put more distance between itself and the doomed Shah, and tried to ingratiate itself with the Iranian opposition? After the Ayatollah's victory, would Washington have been wiser to have denied the Shah's request for medical treatment in the United States? Could the hostages' release have been obtained sooner, by diplomacy or by force? Was the military rescue operation, in April 1980, a close miss or a predictable failure? Should the whole hostage crisis have been played down instead of being allowed to become a masochistic national drama?

Though the facades of two small buildings on the west side of Fifth Avenue just south of 56th Street have been saved by a landmark designation, the building at the corner, housing Harry Winston Jewelers, is going to be demolished and replaced by an 18-story tower. A decision to proceed with the project was made after Winston and Steadstol Fifth Associates, the development group planning a 53-story tower on the block incorporating the two landmarked buildings, failed to agree on a price for the air rights to the Winston building.