It Was 45 Years Ago Today

It's what people say as they get older. "I can't believe it has been 45 years." Well, today, I can't believe it has been 45 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Like Pearl Harbor and now 9/11, everyone has a story about where they were and what they were doing.

I was a boy in Boston, and I worshiped John F. Kennedy. Not for any good reason, mind you. I liked him the way a lot of the kids seem to like Obama today. I liked his speeches. I liked his youth. Also, he was from my hometown. He sounded like rest of us Bostonians — he talked funny.

I remember, during the 1960 election campaign, asking one lady ("lady" — she was probably in her mid -20s at the time, which now seems to me to be a "girl") why she was going to vote for Kennedy. "Well, he's handsome and he's Catholic," she said. My own reasons were only marginally better. But, hey, I was 10 at that time. I also hero-worshipped Ted Williams and Jimmy Piersall and Joe Bellino, whose sister Betty had been my baby-sitter.

During that election, there were three kids in my 5th grade class who were for Kennedy. My particular suburb of Boston was a very Republican town. I went around handing out Kennedy buttons and stickers. One day I was accosted by Dr. Barone, who was head of the local Republican committee, and who knew my father to be a staunch Republican. "Does your father know what you're doing?" he asked me.

I could do a pretty fair imitation of the President, as of course JFK became, based on the comedy album (note to young readers: we used to listen to flat, plastic recordings called "albums") The First Family. My parents would trot me out at parties and make me do my imitation for the benefit of adults who were, to use another quaint phrase of the time, half in the bag. Looking back on it, I imagine the party-goers were pretty much obligated to tell me how wonderful and spot-on my performance was. Either that or, given the amount of alcohol being consumed ("Mad Men" is right about that),  anything would have seemed hilarious.

On November 22, 1963, now 13 years old, I was home from school. I had been sick all week with bronchitis, spending most of the week in bed, coughing up green stuff. On that Friday, I was lying on the floor of our den, watching a show on ABC called "Trailmaster" which was a retitled version "Wagon Train." Suddenly, the broadcast was interrupted.

My mother was upstairs in her third-floor sitting room with her friend Betty Horton. I ran up and announced that the President had been shot. They asked me if it was a joke. I went back to the TV for more details. About a half an hour later, I heard my father arrive. "The President has been shot," I told him. He had this strange expression on his face. Incredulity and something else. My father was both street smart and wise. And he was amazingly honest with me, always.

"Where?" he asked me.
"They said 'around the head and shoulders'," I told him.
"He's dead," my father said.

And so he was. The next four days were spent with the rest of the nation, huddled around the TV set. And I never did that imitation again. It wasn't much in the way of a gesture, but it was all a 13-year-old boy could offer when his hero had been shot dead.

About 12 weeks later, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. I had new heroes, and noticed that the girls in my class were all wearing bras. Life goes on, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.

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[Jenni]

"Ambition's debt is paid."