This is long... I wrote it last year on the 50th Anniversary. Like many people, I remember quite well the day President Kennedy was shot. I was only 7 years old, so I’ve wondered why I remember that day so well. As I think back, I can only surmise that it’s because of the impact it had on others around me. As a second grader, I could not understand the geopolitical import nor the global implications of the assassination of a world leader. JFK was nothing more than a campaign button in the kitchen drawer that contained other items like pens that that were out ink, a pencil sharpener (but no pencils – which is probably why we kept the pens hoping they would miraculously refill), a coaster from a bar on Biddle St. and a prayer card from the funeral of a relative I never met. Jackie was just the female face next to the handsome man in the picture with the gilded frame with a light bulb that I don’t remember ever seeing lit. What stands out the most was the reaction of normally stoic figures of authority. People of that time will remember that it was quite an accomplishment for a Catholic to be elected President. Growing up a Catholic in the 60’s meant few “I love yous, fewer hugs, and never tears. I went to Catholic school. To see nuns with names like Dominic, Bede and Dacian weep openly and fall to their knees in prayer was stunning. School books were closed. Lessons were stopped. The tapping of rosary beads and prayers of devotional hope filled the room. Without knowing what the ‘world’ was, I knew it had stopped. It was my first memory of empty eyes. The crossing guards safely got the kids across York Rd. The school bus drivers stopped at the right corners. ‘Closed’ signs were going up on shop doors by owners who were seeing neither the sign nor the door. Then the TV. At 4:30, we would usually be eating the Friday Catholic cold plate (tuna fish, hard boiled eggs and pickled beets) and watching the Twilight Movie (a rotation of B-flics like Target Earth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and the classic giant ant movie Them). Instead, we got more sad faces and more tears. Black and white TV made the images starker. I had never seen a sadder face than LBJ’s, whose eyes drooped lower than the lobes of the largest ears I’ve ever seen on a man. We had a whole weekend of sorrow and pain. It could get no worse, could it? Then came Sunday. I remember being in the kitchen. From the living room (in 1963 you had one TV and it was called the TV set), “Oh my God. They killed him too”. The killer had been killed. The stifling pain and sorrow had been replaced by gripping fear. I was 7, but I recognized a shift in emotions. Sitting on the front porch to share the sorrow with neighbors was replaced by sitting in the house behind a closed door. “He killed Kennedy” became “They killed Kennedy and Oswald”. And you were alone. Facebook had yet to become a compound word and tweeting was a harbinger of spring. Instant was a word that followed Carnation on a can and social media was all the neighborhood kids sitting outside on a summer’s eve waiting for the ‘streetlights to come on’. TV changed the way we saw the world that weekend. The world also changed the way we saw TV. Saturday morning cartoons, barrel-jumping on Wide World of Sports and Dennis the Menace were replaced by race riots and the Vietnam War. Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke were replaced by James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan. Somewhere between Mr. Ed and Mr. Rogers, innocence was lost. Maybe it was just the rite of passage that we all go through. I do know this: I learned words like coffin, caisson and catafalque that weekend. I learned that boots facing backward on a rider-less horse meant the warrior had fallen while on duty. I, sadly, also learned the term ‘lone gunmen’. I am reasonably sure that none of it was in my second grade curriculum.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 03:26:30 +0000
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