44 years ago today

[proud2BlibKansan]

I was 10. In the 5th grade. And life changed. They killed my president.

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school till 8th grade. My uncle was a priest and my mom's cousin was a nun. We had a huge happy very Catholic (and very Democratic) family. My childhood world was immersed in Catholicism. John F Kennedy was like a combination living saint and folk hero in our Catholic world. I can still remember how happy my parents were when he was elected. And they just adored him. It really was a Camelot kind of feeling.

Then came Nov 22, 1963. And I saw my mother cry for the first time. I saw my grandmother cry too. We were watching the endless coverage on TV and my sister and I were laying on the floor in front of the TV. I heard a strange sound behind me and realized my mom was crying. Then I heard my grandma make the same sound. And I remember being afraid to turn around and look at them. It was a loss of innocence moment and I was not ready for it.

It was also the first time I ever heard anyone say anything bad about Catholics. Before then I had no idea that some people didn't like Catholics. I don't even remember exactly what our neighbor Mrs. Frieze said but it was mean. My sister and I decided it was a mean enough thing to say that we would no longer play with her kids. We were constantly feuding with the Frieze kids anyway so it wasn't hard to decide we would take a stand and not play with them. And after a few weeks Mrs. Frieze came to my dad to complain that my sister and I were refusing to play with her kids. And I remember my dad asking me to explain to her why we wouldn't play with her kids. Well I was just as outspoken then as I am today and I gladly told that bitch that since she didn't like Catholics, we decided not to like her kids. (Years later my mom told me my dad laughed for days about this.)

The following summer, my dad's best friend died in the middle of the night of a brain aneurism. That's when I saw my dad cry for the first time. It's funny how we remember things years later and I remember knowing I really wasn't a kid anymore because I had seen my parents cry.

I also knew from the beginning that someone was lying to us about who killed JFK and how they did it. I used to argue with my dad about this. We watched the Warren commission hearings with our eyes wide open; I was convinced my dad would finally see that there had to be more than one shooter. But that was not to be. Then many years later, when the Senate held its own investigation and concluded there had to be more than one shooter, my dad called me to tell me I was right.

This summer, on the way home from Camp Casey, I stopped in Dallas and went to Dealey Plaza and the Texas Book Depository. You can stand right at the window where Oswald stood and look down on the street. There are even marks on the street to show where the shots landed. I will admit I know nothing about guns and shooting but even an amateur like me can easily see that it would have been impossible for one shooter at that window to fire those three shots in that time frame. No way. It was also interesting to stand there and listen to the people coming up to that window and seeing the same thing I saw and hearing them whisper to each other that there was no way Oswald acted alone.

RIP JFK. And I miss my country too.

[zabet]

1. 44 years ago today,

I was about 3 weeks
shy of my 1st birthday.
I did not know what an
effect it had on my folks,
and my country until years later.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. It was a sad day indeed

[Dancing_Dave]

3. K&R

That one just about brought tears to my eyes. I guess 9/11 was more of a moment like that for me, especially in that I was one the people who doubted the official story as soon as I'd heard it, holes and all. And I had some rather furious arguments with my father on that score...though now he seems to be coming around to realize I was right.

I sure wish we had someone more like JFK in the 2008 election. Kucinich is the only one in the race with anything like JFKs inspiring idealism...so media prejudice blocked him from the start.

Things don't seem to have improved since 1963. In some ways, today's situation is far worse.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. You bet it is worse today

:scared:

[nevergiveup]

4. It seems so long ago

yet I can still remember details of that afternoon. Much like 9/11 everyone was in shock and little did we know at the time that it was just the beginning of a string of assassinations that would shake this country to its core.

[aquart]

6. I'm Jewish and they killed my president.

I was 17. All dressed up for my senior pictures that afternoon. I also had two tickets in my wallet for a performance of Twelfth Night that evening IN THE CITY! I kept those unused tickets until my wallet was finally stolen.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Isn't it amazing how many lives changed that day?

[valerief]

7. Me, too. I remember it quite well. I didn't understand why some of

the teachers in school were crying. I figured, heck, we can get another president. They didn't know JFK personally. Why cry? I didn't realize then, of course, how rare it is to get a good president.

[flashl]

9. I haven't feel safe since it happen. n/t

[defendandprotect]

10. It was a day I'll never forget ---

I was trying not to cry because no one else I was working with was crying ---

Things have never been right since then ---

they feared JFK --- that he would be another FDR ---

he probably would have been -- !!!

[havocmom]

11. The Principal came into our class (also 5th grade), handed Mrs Pyles a note and motioned to the hall

She came back shaken, barely able to talk. Asked that we just read books quietly on our own. She just sat at her desk in the back of the room. Silent.

At recess, someone noticed the flag was at half staff. We figured the custodian was having 'one of his days again. It wasn't like his drinking had never interfered with flag protocol. One day he had the California Bear flying above the Stars and Stripes. We shrugged it off.

More reading back in class.

I was one of the few who went home for lunch. Grandpa said the President was shot. We never got along well and I recall screaming at him, calling him a dirty liar... Then he turned up the volume on his old radio, the one with the constantly whining tubes. I heard it.

Turned on the TV.

Saw it.

Don't think I ate lunch. Went back to school and told my friends what had happened. Evidenly, my eyes were red and swollen. They asked what was wrong. I just couldn't think but told them what I had heard and seen.

Don't remember the rest of the day at school. Don't remember walking home. But mom was there already. She normally got off work at 5 then drove the few miles from the Naval Station on Terminal Island to our little apartment in the southwest part of Long Beach. But that day, she beat me home. Maybe all the working mothers got home early that day.

Crying. Stunned silence. The whole world had just stopped. Seems there were no car sounds in the city. No plane sounds. No kids playing sounds. Hell, it seems the birds were silent in all the trees out front and in the Park.

Three silent days. Mom didn't even get dressed the next two days. She managed a shower and stayed in her house coat, moving like her limbs weighed tons. She looked suddenly old and so terribly sad. Grandpa never said much at all for the next three days. He sat outside and just looked like he was too tired to even try to breathe.

We knew it wasn't Oswald then. We knew we were being played even then. We watched in horrible disbelief, but with absolute knowledge that something more profoundly horrible than our President being killed was going down.

When the Jack Ruby killed Oswald, right there on live TV, right in front of everyone's eyes, my mother said it was all part of the plan.

She lived life, doing the holiday stuff, listening to music with her friends, went bowling most Wednesday nights for a couple more decades, but she was never the same after JFK was killed. She didn't speak of it much, but she read everything she could get her hands on... everything except the Warren Report. And she never forgave Earl Warren for lending his name to the coverup she knew was being foisted on the world.

In June of '68, she was trying to stay up late for election results from the Calif primary. She had nodded off. Woke and moved to turn the TV off. She saw all the panic and activity... she came in and woke me. I was still just a kid, but my mother had just seen one last hope gunned down and she needed my shoulder to cry on. She so wanted America to have a worthy leader again. She wanted us kids to have a good steward. She realized there were forces that would not let that happen.

We all lost innocence and we lost the America we knew, the place where anything might be possible. I have been fighting to find that beloved country ever since.

[scarletwoman]

12. I'm so glad I saw your incredibly moving post. Wow, I was so there with you -- brilliant writing!

And I totally feel the same. I was a little older than you, just turned 14 eight days before (my "golden birthday", in fact!). Raised Catholic; in 8th grade, my first year in a public school after attending Catholic schools from kindergarten on.

It was the day that this boy I had a huge crush on had made a date with me to walk me home for the very first time. Texas was/is in the same time zone as my old school in St. Paul, MN. The teachers were summoned via the PA system to the office, then returned shortly afterward and told us the president had been shot.

They broadcast the radio news over the PA system, so we all just sat in our classrooms, listening to newscasts. What I remember most clearly is my best friend screaming and bursting into hysterical tears when the radio announced that President Kennedy had been declared dead. They let us all out of school then.

That boy didn't walk me home, we sat under a tree and talked for awhile after school let out, but both of us agreed that in the face of the monumental tragedy that had befallen our country it just didn't feel right to carry on with our "date".

That Sunday, I too was with my family, watching TV when Ruby killed Oswald right in front of the news cameras. It was my WWII veteran Dad who said, "Well, they've made sure we'll never know what really happened."

I still thought it was possible to recover, even after MLK and RFK. I still thought there was a chance for this country to blossom into a truly enlightened society up until I saw Carter being torn down. Then I realized that the forces which killed those men really had won.

I didn't fight so much as simply drop out. I lived lightly on the fringes, raised my kids and studied lots of different things and learned lots of different skills. I still voted for Democrats in every election without fail, but really didn't get politically involved until the 1992 election when I caucused up in Alaska for Jerry Brown.

I let my hopes rise again on Clinton's inauguration -- Fleetwood Mac and all that. But I eventually understood that nothing had changed, the forces that killed King and the Kennedys were still in charge. Still are, of course. Still will be after this 2008 election, barring some miraculous event.

There's an awful lot of work to do, if we are ever to "find that beloved country".

sw

[havocmom]

13. Interesting that you bring up what was done to Carter

I wrote and erased a paragraph about Cater four times when I wrote my post. Decided I had been too verbose already.

But yeah, Carter stirred the hope. Remember when he and Rosalynn got out of the car and walked in that parade? That was a message. It was a message to us and a message to power. He was walking with us and he was declaring it then and there. I was excited. My mom said 'don't get yer hopes up'.

Hope. A glimmer of hope. And they did, indeed show him that walking with the people would go no where.

Clinton? Just a pill for the pain. No where near a cure for what ailed us.

[scarletwoman]

16. Funny, I didn't have Carter in mind when I first starting writing my post -- and like you,

I was trying not to get TOO verbose. But as my memory wandered back through the decades, the Carter years came up, and I remembered the profound disappointment and pain of THAT time, too.

Clinton had me fooled for a short while, but the reality came through -- "No where near a cure for what ailed us."; damn straight, well said.

What struck me the most about your post is the way your mother and my father, both had the exact same take about the Oswald murder. I know my dad's remark on that weird and awful Sunday had a profound effect on my political worldview for the rest of my life.

sw

[Clinton Crusader]

14. I was 5, watching TV...

A bulletin came on and I called my mom....

My family are Dems and loved JFK. The whole weekend was bleak and dark, I saw my dad cry, and in my 5 yr old way I was scared, now knowing something terrible was going on, making my father cry. We watched the funeral and I will never forget the sound of those drums.

I clearly remember RFK, my mom crying, waking me up telling me he had died.

Arthur Schlesinger said about JFK, "We will mourn his death till the day of our own". How true, how true. These people come along once in a lifetime. :cry:

Now, I have thousands of books, busts, plates, campaign posters, buttons, stamps, you name it. Incurable Kennedy collector.

Will always miss them, and our country.

[MrMickeysMom]

15. I was ten years old and in the 5th grade, too... The biggest crime, by far is the governments'

relentless way our own government interfered with the District Attorney's trial linking Clay Shaw to the JFK conspiracy.(Jim Garrison, NOLA) years later, when someone actually tried to find out WHO KILLED OUR PRESIDENT. This was years after the Warren Report and single bullet theory cooked up by Sen. Arlen Specter. If you haven't seen it, the transcripts of this trial are in the movie, JFK.

True: Oswald was "probably CIA". True: scientific testing never linked him to the rifle in the 6th floor of the book depository. True: the bullet entry/exit wound from the doctors at Parkland Hospital does not support the trajectory of "the lone assassin" position. THAT is the crime existing to THIS DAY.

Lee Harvey Oswald's tax returns and personal files are barred from the public view in the name of "national security". You don't have to go too far to understand the reason everything CHANGED November 22, 1963. It changed because a president was seen as a threat to the military's involvement and world peace was too radical a message. No, I don't know who killed JFK and it should bother the hell out of everybody. Kennedy was a radical for peace.

Oh, BTW, anyone getting ready to flame my ass over this explanation can stick it in their own. I'm no longer passive over the murder of JFK anymore, I'm sorry to post such a negative commentating, but a conspired murder of the president of the United States has not set well with me for quite some time.

Peace be with us over this one.

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=666048701355447870