I can't believe I'm writing two posts in one week, after a year of mostly no posts. But this has been a week of anniversaries, not just any anniversaries, but ones that feel especially personal to me. The newspaper is full of articles today about the Kennedy assassination. I read every single one. It was a compulsion, to see what this one and that one said or remembered. They took me back, tears and all.
I was in eleventh grade, a junior in high school. It was fourth or fifth period, Mr. Taylor's chemistry class, when three girls rushed into the room after the bell rang to signal next period. "The President's been shot in Dallas," they reported, like they couldn't believe it. Half of my classmates were on their way out the door and the other half scattered between chairs, still stacking books in their arms to leave. I was one of the stragglers who overheard the news.
My feet led me along the crammed, bustling hallway, but my head was lost in a fog. Maybe I met my boyfriend who walked me to my next class, maybe not. Some details are lost. Surely, the President will survive, and everything will return to normal. He can't die. That would be too much of a fluke, a shock, in the rock-solid realm of things that just don't happen. Not in America where we live.
The whole Irish-American Kennedy clan was committed to public service and overcoming injustices in society. At the time, Jack Kennedy appeared to be perfect. The epitome of a good-looking, all-American guy from a filthy rich family with homes in Boston, DC area, and Cape Cod. He was a WWII hero, sailor, played touch football, went to Harvard, was close to his family, started the Peace Corps, hung out with Hollywood stars (Marilyn Monroe popped out of his birthday cake!), and his brother Bobby was Attorney General, for goodness sakes. Jackie was gorgeous, elegant, mysterious, had impeccable taste in clothes and White House decor, was a mother to two perfect children (lost a newborn only weeks before), and was poised beyond anything you'd ever learn in charm school. Upper crust too, the wedding in Newport. Together, they were a youthful, vibrant symbol of hope and promise for our futures, and the future of our country. We knew they would succeed, and so could we.
But it wasn't to be. Over the public address system, during Ms. Sipple's American History class, Mr. Bruce, our principal, announced that "President Kenney died today, in Dallas."
In that instant, Camelot vanished. The whole country was in collective mourning, watching TV for hours on end, for days. First came reruns of Walter Cronkite's impossible news flash, then LBJ swearing in as the new president on Air Force One, Jackie in the blood-stained pink suit that she refused to change, Jack Ruby shooting Oswald, the casket in the Capitol Rotunda, the widow in black, a veil over her face, Caroline and John-John in winter coats holding their mother's hands, and him saluting the horse-drawn carriage that held his father's body. There was the procession...masses lined up to watch the march through the streets of our nation's capital, all the way to Arlington National Cemetery and the eternal flame. She asked for that, and it was delivered.
For whatever it's worth, we learned a lot more about Jack through the years -- his shortcomings, affairs, failures, and triumphs. His presidency was cut short, only 1,000 days. Countless books have been written, movies made, and theories promoted to explain the assassination. The simplest is the one I buy. The sheer shock of it all is forever etched in my memory, just as Pearl Harbor was for my parents, and 911 has been for my children. Each led to a loss of innocence for our generation. And that, perhaps, is the reason we mourn -- for ourselves, as well as the country as a whole, and why it feels so personal.
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