I will be fifty in January.
I REMEMBER...
... seeing JFK at an election rally at the May Company, Laurel Plaza, in North Hollywood, CA before the election in October 1960. I lived nearby. I was in first grade.
...Sister Mary Leonora telling us that if our parents did not vote for JFK, they would go to Hell. I thought it was strange that G-d would punish people with eternal damnation for the way they voted.
... the televised debates between JFK and Nixon.
... the October Missile Crisis. It seemed so real! My Paternal Grandmother died that week. My best friend's mother died that week also. The world seemed to be ending.
.... the test ban treaty, fallout shelters, nuclear bomb drills, Kruschev ("We will bury you"), the beginning of the Vietnam War, Sukarno, Suharto, Castro, DeGaulle, Franco, Pope John XXIII.
I was in fourth grade in a Catholic Grammar School. It was lunch time. I remember picking up my lunch box from the cupboard, walking into the lunch line and hearing Sister Mary Joan tell us that the President was shot. It was just before noon, PST. I honestly did not think he would die. I remember praying for him in school.
I remember that there were no cartoons on television that weekend. I remember turning all of the channels and nothing but the funeral was on. I remember the lighting of the eternal lamp on his grave.
I remember seeing the flag at half mast for ninety days, and hearing taps played as it went up and down in the morning and up and down in the afternoon.
John Jr.'s birthday was a few days after the assassination. I think Caroline's was also. I understand that the LBJ White House "allowed" him to celebrate in the White House before he had to move out. Jackie had decorated the White House so elegantly during the time she was First Lady. I remember her breathy voice giving the reporters a tour of the improvements. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe.
The oddest image I recall from that time is the photograph taken of LBJ being sworn in on Airforce One with Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird looking on. It was so strange! Jackie, so reserved, so in control of her emotional self - just hours before she was seated next to her DH, the President, in the backseat of a Ford convertible and he was assassinated next to her! I remember seeing her in the Zabruder film trying to climb out of the back of the car after the shots.
I remember the Beatles arriving in February of 1964 when the flags were still at half mast. I thought it was rude. A country in mourning and this! I remember also that Queen Elizabeth sent her son, Prince Charles, barely eighteen at the time, as the UK rep to the funeral.
Later I remember being in eighth grade and hearing that MLK was assassinated; barely two months later, I remember hearing that RFK was assassinated. In college, Nixon resigned and an attempt was made on Ford - a member of the Warren Commission. I recall being a new mother breastfeeding her DD and hearing that an attempt had been made on President Reagan. The world seemed to be such a terrible place!
Most of all, I remember that everything changed radically after that point in time. For my mom, it was Pearl Harbor; for me, the JFK assassination.
In this age of instantaneous news and (mis-, dis-) information, who knows what the truth is/was/will be?
Mr. Briss is not as old as you think!!
