Was anyone out there alive and aware when JFK, MLK and RFK were shot?

[carolinayellowdog]

65. in both cases, double traumas

I had just turned 10 when JFK was assassinated, and my earliest election memories are of 1960 when most of my classmates were for Kennedy. The teachers held it together but were clearly very upset, and many of us kids immediately started crying. But watching Oswald get assassinated on live TV was the more shocking and indelible memory. Even at 10, I realized that now we'd never get to the bottom of the story with the assassin assassinated.

RFK and MLK happened so close together that the whole spring of 1968 blurs together as one long nightmare. At 14 my preoccupation was with the likelihood that the Vietnam War would drag on long enough to get me and my classmates killed. The violent silencing of two of the most emphatic voices against the war seemed like an omen that it would drag on for years. And indeed, my lottery number in 1972 was so low that I'd have been at risk of being drafted, but for the decision to suspend the lottery draft that year. (John Edwards, also born 1953, was in that same one-year demographic of young men right on the edge of the draft but rescued at the last minute.)