“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken bird that cannot fly.” - Langston Hughes
Seeing as how today is the 40th anniversary of the day day when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I'd thought I'd present a few thoughts.
Everyone who was alive, cognitive and old enough to pay attention to the news remembers where they were on this pivotal day in history. I am no different.
I was in art class and we were just cleaning up our projects before the end of the period. The PA system gave a static buzz, then the voice of a radio announcer droned, “Three shots were fired.”
The general chatter in the classroom dropped to silence as we all looked up at the speakers in the ceiling. I wondered what was going on and why we were hearing this voice that was neither the principal's nor her secretary. I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that perhaps someone had triggered the microphone by accident, still “Three shots were fired.” sounded ominous. We had no idea what those 4 words held in store.
The PA system clicked off momentarily, then the familiar voice of our principal filled the room. "The president has been shot," she said, just before the buzzer sounded to end the class. At the same time those of us in the room exclaimed, “Oh, no!.” or just “No!”
The principal, then instructed us all to proceed to our next class. She didn't have to add, "With dignity," because we were all familiar with that admonition. It was Sister Louise's favorite expression. I don't recall the halls being so quite during a change of class rooms - not that they were ever all that noisy - Sister Louise wouldn't stand for that. What little talk there was, was done in whispers, as though we would disturb some cosmic force, better left undisturbed. Mostly, we were all in shock. Who would shoot JFK - and why?
My next class was algebra, but we didn't launch into a discussion of sines and cosines. The teacher was wise enough to know that our minds were on math at the moment. For a few minutes, we speculated on what had happened and why. Some of us who followed the news more closely than others, knew that the President had been going to Dallas that day, but that was about all we knew at the time.
Sister Louise came on the PA again, and then instructed us to go down to the gym.
I don't know how they got the chairs set up on the gym floor so quickly and I didn't really think about it then, but we all took seats and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
Sister Louise took the stage behind a podium. She told us that the President had been shot in Dallas and had taken to a hospital. Over 300 teenage girls sat in that gym. The silence punctuated only by an occasional sob. Sister Louise said, nearly in a whisper, that we would pray. To this day, I can hear plainly the sorrowful cadence of 300 plus young voices reciting the Rosary led by Sister Louise and one of the other nuns.
Between the news and the comforting rhythm of the prayer, I was numb - just working on auto-pilot - so I don't remember how far we had gotten, when the phone on the stage rang. Silence dropped again like a steel door. In a swirl of black habit, Sister Louise hastened to answer it as we all sat still with a cloud of dread hanging over us. I felt a strong premonition that the news would not be good.
“President Kennedy has died,” she said, when she returned to the podium.
Some of us cried aloud, some sobbed silently and others just sat in shock. I don't remember too much after that. I know the buses were brought in and we were sent home early, but the rest of that day lives only as a blur in my mind.
The days that followed all seemed grey and silent. It seemed that everyone spoke only in whispers. The TV droned in the background with coverage of the flight back from Dallas and recaps of the events. I felt like I'd been dropped into an underwater world where everything worked in slow motion.
My family watched as Jack Ruby shot Ozwald and that added another layer of surrealism to those days. We watched it happen live on TV. It was the end of an era and at the same time a new one had begun. Never again would watching something happen on TV as it was actually happening seem so bizarre.
With the end of that era came an end to the innocence my generation held dearly. We had Camelot on the stage, in the movies and in the White House. Whether you supported this President or not, you had to acknowledge that there was something, somehow mystical about hsi presidency. Perhaps it is just the advantage of retrospect, but that's the way I remember it.
The Kennedy Presidency inspired hope, optimism and idealism, like no other that I have known. My parents weren't especially supportive of him. I don't really remember why. It was just a feeling I got. We didn't much discuss politics, but I knew they considered themselves Independents; sometimes supporting Democrats and other times Republicans. I think my mother just thought he was too young to be President.
To me, he always seemed larger than life, and like many my age, I was fascinated with Jackie, and the antics of Caroline and John-John.
That bright hope and bubble of optimism burst with his death. Vietnam and disillusionment followed. We heard of the ensuing years, that he had been a womanizer and that his marriage to Jackie had not been the ideal we'd supposed. But at that time and in that place there was a magic in Washington that hasn't been matched since.
On November 22, 1963, for more than one generation of people, innocence died, hope took on a coat of tarnish and harsh reality set in. However we must hold on to the dreams we had back then. If we don't hold them dear, all hope - even tarnished hope - will be lost.
Posted by Cyberkat at November 22, 2003 5:46 PM