November 22, 1963. Friday.
For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”
– John F. Kennedy, acceptance of Democratic nomination for president, 1960
My generation’s 9-11.
Why was my teacher crying? Why were we dismissed early? I stopped on my way home as I often did, at Janice M.’s house, Her mother opened the front door. Also crying. We three went into the front sunroom where the television blared.
President Kennedy was dead. Murdered. Shot. Dead.
The end of Camelot.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
There were only three television channels back then. On CBS, Walter Cronkite took off his thick black-framed eyeglasses and announced, “From Dallas Texas. The flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.” He shuffled a paper and continued, his voice quavering, “Vice President Johnson, throat clearing, has left the hospital in, uh, Dallas but we do not know to where he has proceeded, uh, presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the 36th president of the United States.”
JFK was vibrant. He talked as if anything was possible. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.“
A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot
And there’s a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot.
Only a few months after his inauguration, East Germany began constructing the Berlin Wall. A year later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, James Meredith desegregated all-white University of Mississippi, and the United States discovered the Soviet Union was building missile sites in Cuba.
And 1963?
NAACP’s Medgar W. Evers assassinated, shot in the back.
March on Washington to demonstrate support for civil rights legislation.
KKK Birmingham church bombing. (You must see Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls)
Nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union and UK.
South Vietnamese president assassinated.
November 25, 1963, John Kennedy buried, Arlington National Cemetery
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering
Than here in Camelot.
