General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: When you see today's date on a calendar or printed or online [View all]Hekate
(90,642 posts)
and optimism on that day.
I was 16 and felt deeply wounded, but not that. I resisted conspiracy theories for many years. It took all the events of the 1960s to unfold to bury that much of my innocence. It took so many assassinations, and the Vietnam war.
How sad that some here have seen fit to dismiss, almost mock, our memories.
For those who dont know, who were not there, let me say that Jack and Jackie did bring a sense of Camelot, of youth and glamor and optimism and renewal. They showed an appreciation of classical music and the arts in general. The great cellist Pablo Casals gave a concert at the White House. Jack and Jackie Kennedy brought in accomplished people, some of them as glamorous as themselves and others just incredibly bright. She was shy, but he was quick witted, witty, ready to spar without rancor with the press.
He founded the Peace Corps, and very many of us who were young sent away for the packet, a big envelope stuffed with information, that we held on to for years. When I was in college and ever since then I have met former PCVs, that is Peace Corps Volunteers.
But on this day, 58 years ago, I was a public high school kid on Oahu making my way through the jammed hallways between home room and chemistry class, when a boy called out that the president had been shot. He must have had a transistor radio. Our school was typical for the time and place: there was no intercom, there were no televisions but word spread out nonetheless, and by 9:30 our teacher told us that the president had been killed in Dallas. (Im scratching my head trying to remember my chem teachers name, and all I can recall now is that he was Japanese American, served in the US Army in WWII and was sent to be part of the occupying force in Japan after the war ended.)
The shock was incredible. If there was anyone anywhere in the school who thought this murder was a good thing, they kept their mouths well shut. As I was reminded almost daily, most of the white kids in the school were military dependents (not me), and a fair number of those were from the South, strangers in a strange land.
School was not dismissed, but in midday a mass assembly was called in the big courtyard. Words were spoken, probably a prayer as well, and then the best trumpeter in our school band played Taps as the flag was lowered to half-staff.
And home to spend three days glued to the TV in the living room. Watching the funeral. Watching Jack Ruby kill Oswald on live TV, robbing us all of whatever questions Oswald might have answered.
And on with life, my country changed in ways I could not have foretold.
RIP Jack & Jackie Kennedy