To the best of my recollection…I was only seven at the time…I was in school when I learned that President Kennedy had been shot and killed.
The main thing I recall is that I’d never seen adults cry until that point. My teachers were crying and when I got home, my folks were crying. I was more upset by that than by Kennedy’s death, because the presidency, death…these were ephemera to me. But adults crying…that scared me. I didn’t know they did such things.
When Johnson was elected, I remember watching the inauguration and asking when they would shoot him. My parents were appalled by the question. They didn’t understand that I knew Lincoln had been shot and that Kennedy had been shot. So I just figured that was SOP. You’re a president until someone kills you, at which point a new one is brought in. Oh yeah. I was a real Quiz Kid.
When I grew up, I did an internship at the Gannett newspaper chain. When the anniversary of the assassination came around, out of curiosity I checked the newspapers’ editorials before JFK’s death and the day after. I found exactly what I thought I would. The day before, the editorials were scathing. Critical of JFK, his policies, his every decision. The day after he was shot…180 degree turn. He was a president with vision, he was going to carry the country to greatness, etc. I just found that…interesting.
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I know it’s been a few days, but reading the body of this thread is making me think of a story from the Hourman series by Tom Peyer. Snapper Carr, his ex-wife and Hourman become trapped in a temporal stasis loop for the few minutes after Kennedy was shot. The same depressed people saying the same depressing things over and over for eternity. Everyone remembering the immediate circumstances surrounding the event from their own perspectives around here kind of feels like that, only I can leave if I want to.
JFK’s death had a profound effect on the country in ways that cannot be understated. For someone who was not born yet, you need to understand that for those who DO remember, his assassination was as shocking and world-altering as 9-11. Peter’s observation about the editorials of November 21, 1963 shows us that JFK’s life (however inspiring (or not) he may have been to many) was pretty much politics as usual.
It was his DEATH that changed everything. And like 9-11, the shooting of JFK initially brought the country together… and then, like 9-11, the country became more polarized than it had ever been.
That said, I guess I’d be the rare one who didn’t remember where I was. 9-11 didn’t affect me for a couple of months, when I saw exactly how polarized it had actually made everybody else.
When people are proudly declaring themselves to have yelled at their Arab neighbors (even admitting they didn’t even know what religion they subscribed to!), it just makes me think I could do without the polarizing effect. It’s easier for me to stay sane when my opinions aren’t on the same side of the fight as opinions I hate.
As I read this thread, I can’t help but remember the SNL sketch where people recall on a talk show the first time they heard about Kennedy’s death. (The upshot being that they’d only learned about it 20+ years after the fact.)
The death I really remember for some reason was when Mel Torme died.
I just went to my room that night, and played his “Live in Japan” CD through the night.
The thing that always sticks in my head about the Kennedy assasination(considering it was 9 years before I was born) is my Mom always saying that my sister was running around in diapers. Every year, “And Sheil was running around in diapers.” Was Kennedy a good president? Some of the political , ahem, experts out there will debate it for eternity. For me, whether or not he was a good president is moot, that’s for the historians to decide a long time from now. What makes it relevant is that for a moment, everyone forgot their political or ideological ties, the nation was united. Or maybe that’s just the survivors talking. Sort of like a day a few years ago when some people flew some planes into buildings. When most people think of that day, American pride bubbles up. When I think of that day, y’know what I think of? I think of how sad I was that I brought my son into a world like this, the look of shock on my friend’s face because he used to work in tower 2, and some fat fart that nobody really likes yelling at the TV because the picture was going in and out of focus and bìŧçhìņg becasue we probably weren’t gonna get paid for that day. The thing that bothers me, though, more than anything else, is that it’s a shame that it takes a tragedy of that magnitude, or any magnitude, really, to make people remember that everyone around them aren’t just extras in the scene, they’re PEOPLE. The good old days weren’t so good, tomorrow’s not as bad as it seems. Okay, that’s my rant, whoever’s got the soapbox next is welcome to it.