Sixty years.
Amazing.
For those old enough to remember that horrific day in American history — and I am — the arrival of the 60-year marker since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has opened the flood of memories, along with the inevitable passage of time providing more insight into the legacy of JFK himself.
On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a seventh-grade junior high schooler living with my parents in Northampton, Massachusetts. School got out at 2:30 in the afternoon, with kids heading out of the back doors that emptied onto a playground and, from there, out another playground behind an adjacent grammar school.
But out of the blue, there was something going on. Instead of the usual hubbub that was the norm from dozens and dozens of early teenagers, all was strangely quiet, with kids suddenly talking quietly, gathering in clusters. The reason was quickly made clear.
Word was spreading that President John F. Kennedy had been shot to death in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a motorcade.
Every kid on that playground was stunned. Some started to cry. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As a history buff, I knew enough to know the last time a president — William McKinley — was assassinated was in 1901, a full 62 years before.
Instead of going home, I went to the nearby campus of Smith College, the famous women’s university. My mother worked there as the executive assistant to the college’s English and history departments. Clearly the word had reached there as well. My mother was standing outside her office talking with a couple professors. Everyone was appalled.
I was already interested in politics. My parents were staunch Republicans. Dad had served in the city council seat once held by a young future president — Calvin Coolidge. He had also been the Republican city committee chair. Mom had served as chair of the Hampshire County Republican Women. Between the two of them, I had been to lots of city council meetings, not to mention GOP Lincoln Day dinners and state Republican conventions, where they served as delegates. Already in my young life, I had met both a governor and a senator from Massachusetts, the latter Republican Leverett Saltonstall.
In his capacity as a town elder, Dad was one of several adults asked to serve as chaperones for the senior class of Northampton High School on the traditional trip to Washington.
In 1958, even though a Republican, Dad was invited to have coffee in the Senate dining room with then–Sen. Kennedy. They had a great conversation about local, state, and national politics. To Dad’s eternal amusement, when the bill for two coffees arrived, JFK had no cash on him, and Dad had to pay the bill.
Now, walking home from seeing Mom, I passed all kinds of people on the streets, quite a number of them sobbing openly.
Waiting at one corner for traffic to clear so that I could cross onto our street, I was suddenly making a resolution to myself. Then and there I resolved to get involved in politics — ASAP. Which is to say it was my young kid’s way of carrying on what quickly was being called the Kennedy “legacy.”
Once home, I turned on the black-and-white Zenith television that was in the living room.
For four days, starting right then and there, Americans via television were plunged into something never before seen — s simultaneous, nationally communal experience of a major historical event.
There were only three television networks at the time — ABC, CBS, and NBC. There was no such thing as cable TV. Yet for those days, from Friday afternoon through Monday, each of the three networks were zeroed in on the same thing — coverage of JFK’s assassination. In today’s world, the intensity and variety of cable news connects Americans to unfolding events. But the experience was brand new in 1963.
The rest of Friday, the coverage was about his body being returned to Washington on Air Force One. It was riveting. The plane landed. A cargo carrier made its way to a side door of the plane, where the casket was loaded. Greeting the plane when it arrived was JFK’s brother and closest confidante, brother and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. RFK had bounded up the stairs into the plane, making his way to the back of the plane where the casket was resting, next to the stunned and already ever vigilant first lady Jackie Kennedy.
The two stepped onto the cargo carrier with the casket, and, as it was lowered to the ground and a waiting hearse, Americans were further shocked to see Jackie Kennedy. We were told her suit was pink, with dark colors. But quite unmistakably it was smeared with her husband’s blood. Offered the chance for clean clothes on the plane ride back (they had been overnight in Texas, so there were clean clothes available), Mrs. Kennedy, it was later revealed, had declined because she wanted the country to see what had been done to her husband.
With the late president’s casket and family gone, only then did the country see the new president, the now former Vice President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ gravely made a statement to the waiting microphones, took no questions, and then, too, was out of there, returning not to the White House but to his own Washington residence. (There was no official house for vice presidents in the day; they were on their own with their own private residence.)
Eventually JFK was returned to the White House, his now-flag-covered casket escorted to the East Room to begin a three-day national mourning.
Always a student of history, Jackie Kennedy had produced the historical records of the services for the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Americans were told that while updated for the mid-20th century, JFK’s service would borrow from Lincoln’s.
The TV coverage was relentless and everywhere, no matter where you turned the dial. Saturday saw prominent American visitors to the White House. Sunday saw the casket’s trip to lie in state in the Capitol, with a televised funeral service.
As if all of this wasn’t horrific enough, the networks covered live the transfer of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from one jail to another in the city. Suddenly, as Oswald appeared on screen — handcuffed and escorted by two police — Americans saw a black-hatted man, quickly identified that day as one Jack Ruby, run right up to Oswald, thrust the gun at his stomach, and pull the trigger. Oswald, loaded into an ambulance, was shortly a dead man.
Monday saw the final trip, the casket on a horse-drawn caisson. The horse, a gleaming black known as “Black Jack,” had empty boots in its saddle stirrups, military tradition having them face backward as a tribute to a fallen warrior.
Monday was the funeral at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, not far from the White House. The casket was accompanied by the Kennedy family and all manner of world leaders, all on foot. Most visible was the towering figure of the uniformed French president, Gen. Charles de Gaulle.
Finally, the Monday coverage closed as Mrs. Kennedy lit what then and still today is known as the “eternal flame” at JFK’s gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery.
What came next — and continues to this day — was the ongoing evolution of what quickly became known as the “Kennedy Legacy.” Over time, volumes of books on JFK would appear. His senior staffers — counselor Ted Sorensen; special assistants Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Ken O’Donnell, and Dave Powers; press secretary Pierre Salinger; and others — all put out memoirs of JFK’s career and time in the White House.
They weren’t alone.
My teenaged self would spend years snapping up JFK books as they were released.
Over time in later years, I would become a Reaganized conservative. Ronald Reagan, in 1960, was still a Democrat and chaired “Democrats for Nixon.” But by two years later, he was a Republican, his own political career weighing anchor and sailing him eventually into the White House.
Eventually, I would be in the White House working for President Reagan — with a portrait of JFK on my office wall.
Because JFK was unable to raise funds for his own presidential library, when Reagan was asked by JFK’s children Caroline and John Jr. to help, he instantly signed up. In 1985, the Republican president appeared at the home of JFK’s brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, to raise money for the library.
Among other things, Reagan noted this of members of his staff like myself:
It is a matter of pride to me that so many men and women who were inspired by his bracing vision and moved by his call to “ask not …” serve now in the White House doing the business of government….
But I must confess that ever since Caroline and John came by I have found myself thinking not so much about the John F. Kennedy Library as about the man himself, and what his life meant to our country and our times, particularly to the history of this century….
When he died, when that comet disappeared over the continent, a whole nation grieved and would not forget. A tailor in New York put up a sign on the door — “Closed because of a death in the family.” That sadness was not confined to us. “They cried the rain down that night,” said a journalist in Europe. They put his picture up in huts in Brazil and tents in the Congo, in offices in Dublin and Warsaw. That was some of what he did for his country, for when they honored him they were honoring someone essentially, quintessentially, completely American. When they honored John Kennedy, they honored the nation whose virtues, genius — and contradictions — he so fully reflected.
Many men are great, but few capture the imagination and the spirit of the times. The ones who do are unforgettable. Four administrations have passed since John Kennedy’s death, five presidents have occupied the Oval Office, and I feel sure that each of them thought of John Kennedy now and then, and his thousand days in the White House.
Today, 10 presidential administrations have passed since JFK’s death, Biden’s being number 11.
As unreal as it seems to this one-time seventh grader from Northampton, Massachusetts, this Nov. 22 marks 60 full years since that dark day in Dallas.
The world has changed.
Or has it?
But hopefully young Americans who read history will continue to be inspired by JFK — and get involved themselves.
Happy Thanksgiving.