Was it really 60 years ago? So why does it seem like yesterday
My goodness, has it really been 60 years?
I guess it has. In one way, it seems like it was indeed a long, long time ago. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like it has been that long,
Especially since I can remember it so vividly and clearly, almost like it was yesterday.
I remember right where I was when I heard the news.
I was in eighth grade at Christ Lutheran Church’s parochial school in La Mesa, California. It was roughly two weeks after I had turned 13 and Thanksgiving Day was coming soon. Little did I know that a year from then I would be celebrating my 14th birthday and my 1964 Thanksgiving as a resident of Denver, Colorado.
However, that is another story for another time. Back to La Mesa in 1963.
My best friend Tim Zelt and I had finished our lunch and headed out to the playground. It was late November, but hey, this was the San Diego area and the weather was always great.
We were waiting for some others to get done with lunch and come out so we could start up a baseball or kickball game. Meanwhile we were playing on the little kid playground equipment.
Another of my classmates and my good friend Jennifer Fisher, came out of the school and headed over to us. She was crying, a lot.
When we asked what was wrong, she said, “Somebody shot the president.” I recall my friend Tim asked her if she meant President Kennedy, and she said yes, of course.
I think I went into some kind of shock, like probably everyone else. But as a just barely 13-year-old, it had never even occurred to me that the president, JFK, could ever be shot. I mean, I realized that a hundred years earlier President Lincoln had been assassinated, but that was back in the wild west days, wasn’t it, after the Civil War.
My next memory is of watching TV constantly for the entire weekend, something we were never allowed to do normally. My mother, especially, was glued to the TV. Although she was a lifelong Republican, the fact that our president, a Democrat, had been shot hit her hard, too. I am not sure anyone was immune from the shock.
All the networks were doing almost constant news coverage of the assassination, swearing in of LBJ, search for and arrest of the accused killer and more.
That is why we saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed live on TV.
The days that followed included the funeral and much, much more, all on TV. Now days that is just what we expect, with news on every channel, and even 24-hour news channels. But back then, it was just the standard news programs at breakfast time and supper time.
I just saw an item that said that a vast number of Americans alive today were not alive when JFK was killed on Nov. 22, 1963. And many do not know much about it.
For those who were alive that day, it was a turning point in our lives. Things just were not quite the same, ever again. Especially if you were a sheltered, blissfully unaware, 13-year-old kid.
If you are one of those many folks who was not alive in 1963, or too young to remember it, I suggest you Google some information about JFK and those infamous days in November 1963.
There is an immense amount of information about it, including the famous Warren Commission massive investigation and report about the assassination and all of the conspiracy theories about what happened, some of which continue to this day.
My opinion is, it was just Lee Harvey Oswald, from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.
This one event might be the most studied moment in time of any in history. And it’s effect on our history is hard to really grasp.
I think everyone has that kind of a moment sometime in their lives.
For my parents it was probably Dec. 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. For my kids it might be Sept. 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers in New York were attacked.
Of course, there are many big moments in our lives. Personal ones like weddings or birth of our children, or non-personal ones like disasters or wars.
And then there is the one that changes you, in a way you didn’t expect and maybe didn’t want.
For those of my age, that moment was the JFK assassination. Suddenly we became aware that the world, our country and all of us, had changed.
Sixty years ago. Really.
Although it sure does not seem like it.