Forty-two years ago, almost to the minute, John F. Kennedy had his head blown off in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Let’s take a moment to remember the man, his legacy, and the shattered promise his death represented for our country.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
an imperfect man
with personal secrets
that the media respected
those were the days
I bet — in fact, I know — he would have loved your spirit 🙂
awwwwww
thanks susan 🙂
Let’s hear it for the sensuous women that he and his brethren loved…. even back in the days when a nice woman never, ever …
My mom used to point to women who had pierced ears and tell me that they were the kind of women who went to taverns.
Oh, the sraitjackets we put ourselves in, eh?
Clip-on earrings hurt.
So true. Everything is considered “news” now.
Sex is considered news; the Downing Street Memos are considered distractions.
How far we have strayed, indeed.
Thanks Booman. I was a baby and don’t remember anything about it, but my parents still talk about it like it was last year. They took me and drove straight down to Mexico for a few weeks, just to get away from the anguish.
WHat’s really troubling about JFK’s assassination is that it was 42 years ago….and I remember it. I was 3 years old and I remember my mother watching tv and crying and I asked her what happened and she told me our president got shot. I went to my friends house next door and told her my president got shot and she said no he was my president. That is one of the few things I remember before I was school-age.
Wow – are we related? My earliest memory (at age 4) also is of my mother and grandmother crying while my mother ironed; JFK’s funeral procession was on the TV.
Dang. I think all three of us are related. I was 3 1/2. My mom was ironing while watching the news and I was leaning on my rocking horse. My response was, “but that can’t be OUR president. It’s presidents in South America that get killed.”
Don’t ask me where that came from.
and I’m in the same age group…perhaps it’s because my parents were Republicans (and most likely voted for Nixon) that the assassination didn’t have the same impact in my household. Oh, I’m sure they respected the Office of the Presidency and were sad to see Kennedy killed…but perhaps not with the depth of feeling that was found in Democrat households.
Oh, and if you ever have a chance, see the two-part “Quantum Leap” episode where Sam Beckett leaps into the body of Lee Harvey Oswald — a very creepy, yet moving, episode…
on your rocking horse …. ohhhhhhhhhhhh …. do you have a photo? Put it up please.
In his ‘Gunslinger’ series, Stephen King says that JFK was our ‘last gunslinger’.
I was born well after JFK was killed, but from what I’ve read and seen of him, it’s an incredibly accurate description.
If you’ve read the books, you know that it is also a great compliment.
Now I always think that when I think of JFK…he was our last gunslinger. When will the next come along, I wonder? Will one?
You know, I’m really kinda pissed that there was never a president I grew up believing in. I never had that experience. I thought Reagan was racist and thought Poppy was a punk. I, of course, never expected much from them and never considered them role models.
(I’ve shared this before, but during Clinton’s impeachment, an older colleague–who knew the impeachment was BS–said that folks should be able to believe in their president. I told him I came of age during Reagan/Bush: why would I EVER believe in a president?)
Perhaps I should be happy that I never developed an unhealthy reverence for presidents. Besides, I revered my parents, teachers, godparents; electeds like Harold Washington & Tom Bradley, celebs like Oprah–the role models unknown to me seemed more authentic. But still … couldn’t there have been a president–but for a moment–that I could look up to?
Typing too darn fast.
That should read: “…even the celebs unknown to me seemed more authentic then the president.”
The parents, teachers, godparents, of course, were the most authentic of all!
It also would have been my Dad’s birthday today. He would have been 96.I just realised Dad was my age now when Kennedy was killed.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in sixth grade and had asked to be excused to use the restroom. The teachers lounge was right across from the john and the door was open. They had the radio on very loud and I heard them announce the president has been shot, the president has been shot. I ran back into my classroom and told my teacher. He thought I was joking and told me that was not funny. I explained I heard it on the radio. He left and came back. He was as white as a ghost and told the class that what I said was true. So many of us cried. The next few days were unbearable. We all sat glued to the television. The riderless horse, John John’s salute. Then Oswald being arrested and Ruby shooting him right on TV. What an awful time that was. Like it was yesterday…
The black and white TV. What else was there to do. it was so stunning and so unthinkable.
It’s also unimaginable that John John is gone.
It is such a tragic family. This day will always bring tears to my eyes. We all know that JFK was no saint but I often wonder what might have been.
If you like, check out Teacher Ken’s post at My Left Wing.
Thank you, Booman, for this remembrance.
I was a senior in college in Ohio. It was mid-term exams time….just before breaking for Thanksgiving Holiday.
One exam finished.
I stepped outside the building into a chilly wet day, to see crowds of students huddled together. A few had transistor radios clenched to their ears. The faces were all drawn.
“What’s happened?” we asked. “What’s wrong?”
I heard no clear answer, only several voices quietly saying something about “The President” …”The President”
“What about the President?” I shook someone’s arm. “What is it?”
“President Kennedy has been shot.” The voice was soft. The faces all showed shock. Disbelief. Tears. Disorientation.
“What? What did you say?” “Shot?” “How is he?” I asked.
More quiet murmurs. I gently shook the arm of the radio man again. “How is he?”
“He’s dead!”
“NO!”
Shock, disbelief, tears, denial….
“No!”
We filed back into the building. Our professor offered to postpone the next exam. We took it anyway. We went home for break. The pain had not settled in fully yet. But utter shock was on everyone’s faces, sober, sober faces.
It still hasn’t.
Little did we know what was to come….
I’m reading all of these and am incredibly moved. Thank you all for your posts in this thread. Indeed, what we lost.
I know it’s the day he was assassinated, but since I wasn’t born, my only take on it was a general sense of fear b/c if you can take out a president, then none of us are safe.
But 12 years ago today, my beloved proposed. So while I know that plenty of people (parents included) knew just where they were and what they were doing when they learned of his death, this day has nothing but happy memories for me.
Which like I said, is weird because so many folks do not.
I forgot to add that some dear friends of ours have the (now) most unfortunate wedding anniversary: Sept. 11th
And they were married in NYC. We were there. I’ll never forget that weekend–it was fantastic.
Now, instead of remembering how much fun we had, we only remember chaos, the Twin Towers, being separated for hours on end, and thanking God we made it home on 9/11/01.
Pearl Harbor Day is like that in our family:
It’s the day my wife and I got engaged, and three years later, the day our first son was born.
Talk about timing!
An anniversary and a birth. Wow.
I can hardly see through the tears to write.
Thom Hartmann is playing extended speech excerpts. When in contrast we listen to the voices of the Presidents the American system has chosen since Kennedy’s extended administration ended in 1968, it’s clear that the passing of Camelot refers to much, much more than his leadership.
I was almost 8. The school principal was Mr. Lamb. They announced that the president had been shot – and we were to go straight home – and make sure we didn’t walk alone. So my little sister and big brother (6 and 10) and I walked the 6 blocks home. My parents came home from work early.
For 4 days we watched the tv – yes, black and white. This was my first concious memory of tv. We watched cartoons and stuff but nothing ever made such an impression on me as those 4 days of life in black and white.
The next 10 years are surreal. It started with the President’s assassination, the assassinations of Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. There was Nixon and Watergate, friends going to Vietnam, and some not coming home.
I believe that there is supreme being that watches out for us – otherwise my generation should be wrapped in straight jackets.
May JFK, and the others, walk in peace in the lands beyond this one.
I attended a conference in DC this weekend in which top researchers spoke re the case. My report is posted at Bob Parry’s site at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/112205a.html. Please drop by and read it. Thanks!
I read it, and all I gotta say is …
Dayum!!!
I wish I could have attended. Thanks for sharing.
Lisa has promised to write up a version for us here! Can’t wait.
Meanwhile, Lisa has posted a diary about phosphorus, and the ORANGE DIARY POLICE PEOPLE are all over her about it. Grrrrrrr.
Wow. That is infuriating.
With all the rubbish that gets posted as diary entries over there, they pick on a substantive, well-written piece like that?
I’d say it’s unbelievable, but actually it’s par for the course these days, with El Caudillo and his faithful Armandildos high-fiving and back-slapping each other while they gang-up on anyone who stands up to them. For some people, there is life after high school, and it’s an orange-colored world.
Then again, if it had been considered new material, Lisa would have found that it had been cannibalized and posted on the front page under someone else’s name, with no credit given her.
YES! Some of the stuff that gets in the REC list is just AWFUL! It’s two or three lines or paragraphs of some news story that someone has pasted, usually with five hundred exclamation points. (Of course, there are also marvelous, thoughtful pieces, but not as many.)
Lisa’s piece was good!
What’s really scary is that they don’t see their behavior as rude.
Then again, if it had been considered new material, Lisa would have found that it had been cannibalized and posted on the front page under someone else’s name, with no credit given her.
Naaaaaaaahhhhhh .. that never happens. (‘cept to me so many times it’s gotten to be a personal joke).
And the exchange that ensued with Armando. It’s happened to me, one of the reasons I probably will never do another diary entry there, that plus I spend a lot of time on the ones I have written, and I can’t stand to see them vanish in a flood of one-liners.
What really annoys me is that I’d be perfectly willing to do the unpaid legman/researcher for them, but dammit, say “thanks to so-and-so for pointing this out” occasionally. At least Kos has the good sense to ignore you when you point out what he’s doing, unlike Armando, who gets defensively abusive (or abusively defensive). Here’s what happened when I caught him plagiarizing someone else recently. I especially like it how he always goes about these threads with the cyber equivalent of a goon squad to pummel anyone who challenges him.
Your posts in Lisa’s diary today were brilliant, funny, and on the mark. You are my hero!
Thank you for speaking up for the nearly voiceless over there.
Really, I could not believe that. Especially since an issue such as that is ongoing, and I find it useful to have someone post something like that to serve both as a repository of information as well as new articles – first sum up what we already know, then add to that knowledge with new material or analysis. Even if the stuff was familiar to you, the quality of the writing made it worth having as a diary entry. I’d like to think it was just a case of a few people having a bad day, but unfortunately it seems like a bunch of people indulging in a sort of gang activity that seems all too common there now.
I’ve been posting there 3 years, and I’m getting to the point where I don’t feel at home there anymore. And too many people I’ve liked and admired have gotten banned for ludicrous/unfair reasons.
Oh well, enough of that! Thanks for the compliment, I hope I prove myself worthy of it. And my condolences on the death of your mother. I saw your post about it Sunday, but didn’t have time to say anything, then it slipped my mind until just now. I hope you’re okay, having that happen just before a holiday can make things so much worse. Take care, and be well.
Goodness, gracious. That little shouting match does give new meaning to the term “paranoid,” doesn’t it?
Yet he’s the one who always initiates the dialogue, such as it is.
At least he stopped with the obscenity/profanity/scatology he used to subject people to. That’s the result of a direct order from The All Highest, BTW, at least that’s what I was told by someone who would know.
with repeating a topic from an earlier week, and here’s why:
Suppose you get your brand-spanking new computer, and hook it up to the Internet. You immediately go to this top site that you’ve heard about on Air America: Daily Kos (the proprietor is on every Tuesday, for crying out loud).
Let’s say that there’s an average of 50 diaries a day posted. To go back to November 10th (which is when people were saying the White Phosphorous diaries were posted) you’d have to go back about 2 weeks — at 50 diaries a day, you’d have to go to the Diaries list, then click “Previous 10” (or 15 or whatever your default is) so many times, you’d get bored. How much knowledge disappears in the ether because it’s considered “old news”? Didn’t the MSM slam the Downing Street Memo as “old news”? And isn’t that why we never hear a mention of it?
Besides, something may be “old news”, but someone may have a new angle on it — what if someone who was a chemist came along and wrote a diary about White Phosphorous and the effect on the human body? What if a Vietnam vet came and wrote about his experiences with napalm, and talked about how WP is far worse than napalm? Would that be slammed as rehashing “old news”?
Sure, it may be “old news” to those folks who spend all their time at the Orange Empire and don’t have a life…but for the vast majority of Americans, this is something new for them to wrap their brains around, and the more we can talk about it the better.
That’s the great thing about BooTrib — we’re still small enough that the diaries stay up longer, so we have more time to digest the information and have thoughtful discussions.
‘Nuff said…
I think 50 an hour is more like it, certainly during peak hours.
What made it so annoying to me was that right below Lisa’s diary was something called, IIRC, “I Love Johnny Cash” that consisted mostly of the lyrics to Cash’s “Man In Black” song. Yeah, we really need more stuff like that, instead of reporting on the WP issue.
without pulling out my hair in anger and frustration, and the spouse likes my hair the way it is.
I at least slapped a “recommend” on it, just to piss off the Diary Police…
🙂
LOL, Cali Scribe! I hope you’re not bald now!
“It was worth the side trip to see your spirited defense of Lisa,” he said, sinking contentedly back into the much friendlier waters of the frog pond, a wide green smile on his froggy face.
JPol went over there and gave them a piece of his mind too!
It felt good.
I told that Barb in MD that she’d better show me her badge before she ever opens one of my diaries again. Lordy.
(Oh, I’m breaking BooMan’s rule, aren’t i… sorry. (Sort of.) (Not.))
Nine years old, my teacher (not a nun) was leading a singalong as we counted down the minutes before dismissal. I was going to spend the weekend at a friend’s house. My teacher got called out into the hall by one of the sisters, then came back in, a horrified look on her face and told us to start saying the rosary before running back out into the hall. We looked around at each other, obviously something was wrong, started mumbling a few prayers, but then stopped more or less by mutual consent, and waited for her to come back in. In fact she did duck back in once or twice, apparently trying to find a transistor radio that worked (these sometimes got confiscated and would be stashed in the desk). She would do this so fast we couldn’t even manage to ask what was wrong, and she wasn’t stopping to listen to what we were asking anyway. Finally after what must have been only 3 or 4 minutes, she came back in and stopped just long enough for someone to ask a question, and she looked at us and said in this otherwordly voice, barely able to breath she was gasping so, obviously exerting an enormous effort to stay calm, “the President has been shot!”
Somehow, nothing has been right with the world since.
In 1960, my (NYC Irish) father used to argue with people at his job about whether a Catholic should be president (“you think Adenauer and DeGaulle do whatever the Pope tells them to?” he’d say over and over), telling his fellow Catholics they should vote for Kennedy even if they didn’t agree with him because just having a Catholic president was so important. The day after the election, he said people were congratulating him so enthusiastically it was as if he’d been elected himself. There were also some people who called in sick that day, unwilling to face him. This was Huntington, Long Island, a place that had only recently started giving mortgages to large numbers of Catholics. Very Republican in those days, and not Ripon Society types either, but more like Bob Taft-style Middle-Westerners, people out of Sinclair Lewis, etc.
I saw Kennedy two days before the election, at a campaign rally in Commack, Long Island. I was with my father and his parents, at one point we were only about 15-20 feet away from him and got a really good look. I remember being struck by the odd tone of his skin, kind of bronzy-orange tinted. According to something I read years later, this was a result of the treatment he got for his Addison’s disease, which was kept secret at the time (rather remarkable, that).
Probably the most interesting take on the assassination is given in Peter Dale Scott’s book Deep Politics. It’s not an easy read, he tends to circle around the points he’s trying to make and doesn’t always end up making them, but by the time you finish it, you have a very good idea of what he’s talking about, i.e., the cause and effect syndrome arising from the complex, symbiotic relationships between intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates and their assorted hangers-on/tangential contacts, corrupt labor unions, the military, big industry, journalism, etc. ended up producing the circumstances and people that killed JFK. If I read him correctly (and again, he takes an oblique approach to arriving at his conclusions), he argues that knowing who the individual actors were, and what the proximate cause was is to a large degree irrelevant, because when you look beneath the surface, JFK’s murder looks like the culmination of a series of events that went back roughly 20 years.
The two most interesting things I found in Scott’s book:
This anniversary seems particularly sad coming only a couple of days after what would have been RFK’s 80th birthday. This country lost so much in an amazingly short period of time, just over 4 and one-half years. It’s also amazing to think of just how much had changed in our country, in the entire, world, in the time between the murders of those two brothers, more like 20 or thirty years of socio-political upheaval crammed into such a short period of time.
I was in ninth grade and a card-carrying Young Republican. Between classes someone with a transistor radio said the president had been shot. I thought he had only been shot in the arm or something equally non-fatal and figured it was a stunt to boost his polls.
I know that sounds terrible now. But the truth was, he wasn’t universally adored at the time. I can’t remember the numbers but his approval rating was quite low. There were a number of powerful groups who hated his guts: The Cuban refugees and their supporters in the CIA were outraged over the Bay of Pigs fiasco; the steel lobbyists were upset about tariffs; the military-industrial complex was frustrated by his failure to declare all-out war in Vietnam; the Dixiecrats despised him for being a Yankee and a Catholic. There was real doubt that he would be re-elected to a second term.
Part-way during the next class, the principle came over the loudspeakers and said that the President was dead and there would be an early dismissal from school. My English teacher immediately burst into sobs and collapsed on her desk. My best friend, Kathy, started weeping hysterically. Most of the class, even the guys, started crying. Finding myself in the midst of a crisis, I stayed unnaturally calm and dry-eyed like I always do and tried to comfort others.
I didn’t cry until I got home and watched the re-play on CBS. He wasn’t merely a Democrat anymore; he was a man brutally killed. I hadn’t liked Jackie before either; I thought she was pretentious and phony but her grief was so absolute and genuine it broke my heart. My father, when he came home, actually said, “I despised the man but, gawddammit, he was my president and some SOB killed him!” Then, he broke down and cried, too.
The streets were deserted over the next few days. Everyone was glued to their tv screens. I saw Oswald killed LIVE. It was the first of many events wherein all Americans were united by television while being isolated in their homes.
The strain of my grief wasn’t broken until Sunday when my father burst out with, “Now the gawddammned Texas Oil Mafia is in charge; gawd help us all!” That made me laugh. They’ve changed parties over the decades but some of the players have remained the same.
my father died, November 22, 1963 was the worst day of my life.
Maybe it’s better that all politicians today are empty suits; at least you can’t get emotionally involved.
I was a college sophomore walking out of a required science class (my major was history/teachers’ ed) when I heard the news. Classes were cancelled and we all huddled in the dorm or student center lounges to watch the unending newscasts. It was traumatic, but not quite as much as a few years later when King, Robert Kennedy & Wallace were shot in what seemed to be a short period of time – then it seemed as though the country was coming apart at the seams. Looking back now, while those times were tragic, I lived through the turmoil of Watergate scandal, Nixon’s resignation, Reagan’s fiascoes, the 1st Gulf War – all of which seemed worse at the time they were happening. But nothing prepared me for the last five years – the disgust, the slightly paranoid fear of what is to come, and the shame of having this administration represent me to the world.
Who can remember those days and NOT wear a tinfoil hat?
I was in my first year of college at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mi. I was walking from one class to another, and had just entered my classroom, when someone came in and said that the President had been shot. I remember the first thoughts I had (and I’m afraid the first words out of my mouth) were that the blank-blank John Birchers had done it. Their had been some unease in the press over his trip to Dallas in the first place. Right wing groups were said to have been very angry with JFK.
Our prof came in in a few minutes and started to take roll. He had apparently not heard the news that we passed along to him. Just then, someone came in the room and said all classes were canceled for the day.
I left the building got in my car and turned on the radio. On the way out to the main highway, they broadcast Walter Cronkite telling us that JFK had died.
The next 3.5 days were pretty typical of what many Americans experienced. I watched a lot of TV, and listened to the radio. That evening I drove around with a couple of friends listening to coverage on the radio. We were trying to figure out how we could scrape up enough to drive to DC. for the funeral. We couldn’t, so we didn’t go. I am still sorry for that to this day.
Over the weekend, things just seemed to come to a stop. I watched TV nearly constantly. On Saturday I remember wondering how they were so sure Oswald had acted alone, and why he did not have a lawyer representing him yet. I was worried that they were not handling things correctly, and that bothered me.
Sunday I saw Ruby shoot and kill Oswald on live TV. Really, many Americans were not surprised that it happened. I couldn’t figure out why they had not moved Oswald during the night, without fanfare. Instead, the networks were telling the world exactly when Oswald was to be moved to a more secure jail. Seemed strange then, still does now.
By Monday most of the folks I knew were just numb. No public buildings were open, most folks off from work. The funeral, and the tragic images, were forever fixed in my mind. It was the saddest time I can ever recall, until 9/11.
Tuesday morning finally came, and everyone started to breath again. We began to pick up our personal lives where they had been that previous Friday afternoon.
Things changed after that. LBJ the peace candidate in 64, ended up committing hundreds of thousands of GI’s to the war in Nam. 55,000 GI’s dead. Nixon, the bombing, Watergate, Gerald Ford and on it goes.
Perhaps rightfully, history has not been kind to JFK for his human failings. But at that time, all Americans I knew were stunned over the violence that took his life, and ended Camelot.
You reminded me…
One of the attendees at the JFK conference I attended (writeup here) told how he called to offer to represent Lee Harvey Oswald after seeing his plea for a lawyer and his claim that he was just a patsy. But the police chief would not put him through to talk to Oswald. So much for our rights, eh?
One can’t help but wonder to what degree our public view of the assassination turned on that rejected phone call.
I understand that you mean this as a respectful reflection, but the crude hyperbole of …“had his head blown off”…. isn’t working for me. Sorry, Boo.
Oh, that picture of Jackie. The courage and quick thinking. She was reaching out to grab the hand of the Secret Service guy who was trying to get aboard the car as it speeded up on its way to the hosptial. I think she did manage to haul him up on to the trunk as they careened along.
I saw her several times, at the theater and in midtown, when I lived in New York. People knew who she was, of course, and generally gave her space, as New Yorkers do for celebs. I always thought how fragile she looked.
And I have to agree with NorCalJim, BooMan. That turn of phrase about JFK’s head was unnecessarily jarring.
In addition to everything else we lost that day, we lost the ability and opportunity to relate to our presidents as people. Now they travel in bubble-top armored cars with phalanxes of Secret Service outriders. No wonder it’s the imperial presidency.