REPRINT FROM NOVEMBER 22, 2013
||| BY LIN MCNULTY, EDITOR |||
There are some unfortunate, startling events in life in which we remember exactly where we were when we heard the news. The JFK assassination is certainly one of those moments in my life. I have never before revealed my initial reaction; in retrospect, within a few minutes, that reaction would morph as the severity of the incident found its path into my consciousness. I had no previous experience on which to even begin to distill such information.
Let me back up just a bit. I was a senior at Lake Washington High School. One of my favorite teachers was Mr. Brazel, who taught American Government. He was a bit eccentric and radical, though probably liberal (now that I know the difference). He would often go off on rants about the Supreme Court (“12 old men strong and true,” I think he called them), or about our President, John F. Kennedy.
It was between classes, with my next class being American Government, as the hallway was buzzing, when someone came up to my locker to tell me “the President has been shot.” My first reaction was, and I said it out loud, “well, that should make Mr. Brazel happy.” Just like I will always remember that Friday and the weekend that followed, I will never forget those words that came out of my mouth. My sarcasm had developed at an early age.
As soon, however, as I walked in to Mr. Brazel’s classroom, the severity of the situation hit me as I saw him standing in front of the class in tears. My stomach began to churn.
As I recall, we learned during that class time that LBJ had taken the oath of office and was now President of the United States. Mr. Brazel pontificated on the miracle of America that we could experience such a tragedy and our system allowed for a smooth, even though terrifically emotional, transition in power.
I don’t remember the rest of that school day. Maybe we all got sent home early; I’m just not sure.
What I just now remembered is that I attended a Seattle Symphony concert that night during which they somberly played Dvorak’s powerful and dramatic New World Symphony in John F. Kennedy’s honor and memory. The remainder of the weekend was spent in tears, enraptured as events unfolded before our eyes on the television screen. I thought the violence, the tragedy, would never end.
It did end. And there have been additional violent tragedies in our country. But it was that one that taught me the most about how our country works. It was a huge jolt and a tough civics lesson learned quickly. After that, I had even more respect for Mr. Brazel, a more humanitarian connection to the wacky, yet somehow effective, teacher.
Tonight, I shall listen to Dvorak.
We should not look at the Kennedy assassination as a singular event. It was the beginning of a program to wipe out the progressive leaders of the ’60’s. We next witnessed the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X.
That led to Nixon and Watergate (same agents -Hunt and Sturgis involved),leading to Gerald Ford who helped The Warren Commission lie it’s way into existence primarily by moving the location of bullet wounds to conform with the single bullet theory.
These historical events are on a continuum changed our government forever, gave us Iran-Contra, false WMD’s and ultimately the likes of Donald Trump.
Yes Lin, I heard the buzz too. When I got to my geometry class Mr. Oliveres was crying. He was a West Point graduate and as a Colonel in the Filipino Constabulary he had been tortured by the Japanese. I new then that it was true, the idealism of Camelot shattered in an instant.
Mr. Titus, as I recall Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, Sirhan Sirhan a disaffected Palestinian,Mujahid Abdul Halim, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam were members of the Nation of Islam and James Earl Ray was a fugitive from prison. I see no common link between them or any resultant change to the structure of our government as set forth in our (the peoples) Constitution.
The small liberal arts college in Ohio I attended was visited by JFK while he was on the campaign trail, but the field hockey team had an away game, so I missed seeing him. On graduation in 1963 I took a teaching position in a rural farming district on the outskirts of that city, and was teaching an earth science class of HS seniors when the principal came on the intercom to announce the assassination. A class of all-white students was suddenly silent, and then filled with both sobs and swearing.
In April of 1968, I was teaching a diverse class of HS students in the split gymnasium in downtown Syracuse NY, known locally as the 15th ward. A technical HS, the building drew from the entire county, although the vast majority of local students were black. It became a day of singing and speeches, all produced by the black students from that school, and open to all. The overwhelmingly-white administration and staff stood back and watched it happen. It was undoubtedly the most moving of my teaching career.
Today, like Anne Franck, I still believe that people are basically good, but what has happened to our society has changed in ways that make it so much more important that we look clearly and honestly at who we are and where we’re going. It is too important to ignore.
Thank you, Lynn. We were visiting colleagues of my husband’s – he was chief resident of Columbia Presbyterian in NYC and was doing an exchange with the chief resident of Mass. General. I had just entered their home with my 2 yr old and 6 month baby. My hostess had her TV on. They had just announced it…. It was the end of Camelot. A sadness entered that has never left.
I am playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony as I type.
With all due respect Mr. Peterson, Oswald was a project of the intelligence agencies, passed a paraffin nitrate test with no gunsmoke on his cheek.
He was as he said; “A Patsy”.
The CIA at it’s highest levels (Angleton) was tracking (read “guiding”) Oswald’s movements And even Hoover did not believe that Oswald had been in the Cuban/Mexico embassy etc.
Many more bullets were fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel than Sirhan’s gun held, the killers of Malcolm X were police informants, and James Earl Ray’s “rifle”, radio and other belongings were dumped in a storefront BEFORE King was shot.
Military intelligence was shadowing Ray and King to make sure the job got done. For sure, Oswald and Ray never shot anybody.
In a few short years, the entire progressive movement in the 1960’s was wiped out.
And yes, I am old enough to remember when the Kennedy’s were shot too.
Your premise is 50 years behind the recent investigations and documents.
I think of November 22, 1963 as the day when America lost its’ innocence. After all, President Kennedy’s brother was taken out and on down the line. But, of course, it could have just been My generation that lost its’ innocence and trust on that day. The summer before, I was working in a dental office in New Jersey and Kennedy visited our town and the motorcade passed by the dental office. I remember being absolutely thrilled when he looked up at the window and waved back to me. A few years later I was working in another dental office, only this time in New York, and I and the receptionist were waiting for Dr. Falco to come back from the work he did in a local hospital for children who were disabled. We had one patient waiting in the office with us, she was also disabled. We had the radio on, listening to music, and then we heard… Up until that point I had the innocence of youth, but I remember all of the adults around me being equally shocked. I will never forget that weekend before his funeral and the grief that the whole nation experienced. I believe it was a loss of innocence of trust. From that time on citizens have spewed hatred for dissenting political opinions, which is a very, very dangerous place to go. I grieve for my nation now, I have heard threats to the President that we have now, and having lived through that horror, alI I could say, is people need to think before they speak.
John F. Kennedy was a light unto this world. Peace to all.
Like Lin, I was also a high school senior. Our principal made a schoolwide announcement during third period (chemistry for me), and then fed the local CBS radio station over the intercom until lunch. I recall it as a Tuesday, and school then was then cancelled for Wednesday (which would have made that Tuesday seem like a Friday to Lin). Thursday was Thanksgiving, so we were home for five straight days poring over each day’s newspaper, and intently watching Yakima’s two television stations. On one of those mornings (Thanksgiving?), my father woke me up to come watch Jack Ruby’s assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police station. The end of an age of innocence, some have said. Within a year, conspiracy theories were flying around, and roughly a year to the day after the assassination, noted conspiracy theorist Mark Lane came to our college campus to poke holes in the Warren Commission Report (a “Rush to Judgment”, he entitled his book). He explained why the shot most likely would have come from “the grassy knoll” rather than from the bookstore depository where Oswald had worked and where his alleged murder weapon was found. Oswald was just a patsy, he argued, and Ruby had silenced him so the real killers could go free. One of our fellow Orcasonians was then a young attorney on the staff of the Warren Commission. I think the world of Dave, and do not believe for a moment he would have condoned or defended a “Rush to Judgment”. But Oliver Stone read that book, and made a movie which has shaped a generation’s suspicions that Kennedy may have been killed by our own government.
Doug, on this side of the mountains, it was a Friday.
I was a freshman at a Philadelphia archdiocesan Catholic girls’ high school. 2000 girls (and 2000 boys next door). Eighth period French. We were immediately dismissed home, and didn’t learn of the fatal outcome until shortly thereafter. At the time, half the population of the Philadelphia metro area seemed to be Catholic, and while everyone we saw appeared to be in shock, Catholics had been particularly fond of JFK, the first Catholic President who took office after a long and nasty campaign that suggested that the Pope would be in charge if he were elected. Our family spent the rest of the week and then some in front of the TV. My brother and I returned from early Sunday morning Mass and saw Jack Ruby murder Oswald. Chilling. Sad. Unforgettable.