Have you tuned into to any of the programs commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy? Some of them have been fascinating, like the rebroadcast of the story Walter Cronkite put together ten years ago for NPR.
It really is worth a listen.
Many radio programs encouraged listeners to call in and share their memories of November 22, 1963. Iowa Public Radio’s River to River was one of them. I toyed with the idea of calling in and describing my reaction as a seven-year-old second grader. But the idea was squelched by listening to the memories shared by callers who were years younger on that fateful day. They described how sadness pervaded their day and weekend that followed. One woman who was four at the time remembered crying when John-John saluted his father’s coffin.
Compared to those memories, mine seemed…how to put it?
Immature sounds about right. Because I don’t remember much about the day Kennedy was shot, except for Dad not smiling and being quieter than usual when my sister and I got home from school. My most vivid memory is from Saturday morning, when my parents turned the television on after breakfast.
Our television was never on Saturday mornings.
Because our parents were slave drivers. They didn’t allow the watching of Saturday morning cartoons until the house was clean. And since the sibs and I dinked through the chores, we rarely finished before 11:00 AM, and by then the really good cartoons like Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Jetsons, and Mighty Mouse were over. Only the dregs remained: Bugs Bunny (too weird), The Bullwinkle Show (it’s humor too mature), and Dennis the Menace (too boyish).
But the morning after President Kennedy was shot, our television set was on.
My first thought was hot diggity dog, we’re gonna watch cartoons all morning. But I was wrong. Because as Dad explained, there wouldn’t be any cartoons or any other regular programs on any stations all day long because the President had been shot.
But we still had to do Saturday morning chores.
Futhermore, my parents still sent us to school on Monday morning, too. Where Mrs. Eggleston still expected us to do our best coloring in the bird books science project. She still laughed at my stand up comedy routine during show and tell. She still let us use colored chalk on the zoo mural we were making on the the biggest chalkboard in the room. Our second grade class still argued with the other second grade class about which of our teachers had the strangest name: Mrs. Eggleston or Mrs. Bomgaars. We were still expected to be quiet in the halls. We still sang God Bless America in music class.
Maybe that’s why my memories of the day President Kennedy was shot are so dim.
Maybe I don’t remember much about where I was when the President was shot because adults protected me by keeping my little world as normal as they could. Maybe that’s why I remember more about how I felt on that fateful day and in the days that followed. I felt peeved about the Saturday morning cartoon situation. I felt put upon doing chores that morning. But most of all, though a terrible tragedy gripped our nation, I felt safe.
Exactly how a seven-year-old should feel, even after the President has been shot.
