I am bleary-eyed from watching all the coverage on TV yesterday, commemorating the assassination of JFK in Dallas. Today on CSPAN, Book TV is continuing the coverage all weekend. I am riveted to the set. It's like re-living that part of my youth since I remember watching it Live on TV when I was 13 years old. Unlike everybody else in the country who seem to remember exactly where they were the day he was shot, I don't. I keep watching the images hoping to jog my memory. I know it happened between 1:30 + 2:00 pm. I have a vague recollection they told us in school. But I don't have any memories of watching TV with Shirley. I watched the funeral but I don't remember watching it with her. I have a lot of memories but none of this event -
The memorials in Dallas and Boston were televised. Boston had coverage all day long. I found myself in tears many times. I don't remember crying at the time. So I cried yesterday. Grief. Grief for him, his family, those kids, grief for shirley, grief for the country......
Listening to him give speeches, I was struck by the idealism and the hope. I can't remember any other president speak about the importance of the Arts and not just 'commercialism.' What a different direction the country has gone. Completely opposite of his ideas. Today, it's all about 'commercialism' aka Corporate America. Money for the Arts gets cut, cut, cut. A different world.
I just remembered Roby was inspired by him. I heard he was looking into the possibility of going into the Peace Corps. Shirley must have told me. I heard they were going to send him to Calcutta and I know he did not go there. Does anyone remember anything about that ?
ADDENDUM:
It's quite extraordinary seeing coverage from 1963 - the pre-cell phone, pre-digital, pay phone low-tech. way of reporting the story - we all heard and saw the story delivered by the best newsman of the day, Walter Cronkite. He had the most gravitas - but even he was overcome with grief; he had to take off his glasses and wipe away tears while reporting the story.....
1 comment:
Bernice, thanks a lot for sharing that story. I always wondered about why he didn't go. I haven't watched the First Ladies program yet; i watched the 1963 NBC coverage of the funeral and saw so much I had never seen. I even listened to the Low Mass chanted in Latin by Cardinal Cushing who I do remember here in Boston. I don't know how Jackie Kennedy made it through that day....
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