The Day Kennedy Was Shot

As the 50^th anniversary of The Day Kennedy Was Shot approached,  I was asked by Paulette Johnson, a writer and Facebook friend of mine, to post something about my experience at that historic time.  As one of my sisters pointed out, only 26% of the Americans alive today were alive then, and if you knock out the hefty percentage of those folks who never write ANYthing down, that leaves precious few of us to answer the call of history.  So, I wrote the passage below, and posted it.  I was only 12 at the time, and of course now I am aware of magnitude and importance of point-of-view in any writing.  So I was trying for ‘Just the Facts’, trying NOT to inform the reader with what I imagine I felt then, or what I feel now, or, worst case, what I think I should have felt.  I wanted it to be Hemingway-esque.  I am, at best, a scribbler, a wannabe wordsmith.  Still, I was moderately proud when I produced the post, below:

I was in Mrs. Smitherman's choral class at Lake Air Junior High School.  We were learning to sing "When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall", which I still love, simple, silky words in a minor key about loss and endings.  Billy Brewer, a ninth grader, came running in to the choral room and said without preamble, "The President's been shot in Dallas!"  I remember vaguely knowing that Kennedy would be in Texas that day, it was a big deal.  After Billy's excited announcement, we just stood around as Mrs. Smitherman went to the office to see what was up.  After that, we were told to go to our homerooms, where in a little while we were dismissed from school early. I think we knew then that he had died, but it seems to me now as though there was a considerable period when we hoped for the best.  Helen Lacy & I walked to her house, which was closer than mine, and her mom was playing bridge, and we told her what had happened.  Her party immediately disbursed and she got on the phone with Helen's dad and her family.  Helen and I watched t.v. there until my mom called looking for me, and I walked home.  I spent the next 4 days with my family, and we attended the funeral on television, along with the rest of America.  It was a serious time, a time when I felt myself standing just to the side of adulthood, watching it and trying on the emotions of horror, outrage, and grief.  I understood the enormous facts of what had happened, but was too young for them to resonate. It was a dawning, a crossing over.

After I posted this, a school mate of mine from that time commented in this way:

Alice, we were both in that choir class. Do you remember how emotional Mrs. Smitherman became? I don't know how we got home that day. Probably had to wait until normal dismissal time when the bus would pick up us Homers. Odd, all I remember is the moment they said the President had been shot and Mrs. S. with tears running down her face.

I went off on a field trip with some SEGA students for 3 days, but I was still thinking about what Rose had said.  So, on the morning I got back, I sent her a message.  I’ve edited it, but this is in essence what I said:

Dear Rose,  This is coming out of left field, I’m sure, but I’ve been thinking about your comment on my Facebook post about where I was the day that Kennedy was shot.  You said that we were both in Mrs. Smitherman’s choral class at Lake Air Junior High School.  You said that Mrs. Smitherman was crying, that tears were pouring down her cheeks after it was announced.  I’m writing because I don’t remember her crying.  I don’t remember me crying, or anybody crying that day or any of the days that followed.

 I don't remember anybody crying.  Not in Mrs. Smitherman's class, not at any time during that week.  Concern, and a kind of hushed solemnity, a funereal atmosphere, is what I remember, and of course the horror of LHO being shot by JR on national t.v. after church on Sunday morning.  That was like the second airplane into the Tower.

What I'm thinking about is that I don't cry very much. I never have.  I can think of only 2 times in my life when griefful tears flowed unreservedly:  When my father was killed in 1969, and when my firstborn child died at 3 days old in 1984.

I didn't cry on 9/11, and I don’t cry when I read about massacres in the Middle East (or, wherever), or tsunamis, or Katrina, or at any newsworthy tragedy.  Personally,  I was in too much pain to cry when my husband died in 1992.  He and I had cried together when our baby died, but when he died, there was nobody to cry with. When he died, I was in free-fall, and too busy trying to whistle up courage to face the future to let myself dissolve into the helplessness of tears.

Death is a serious business.  I think it's probably not good not to cry at all, but I've never seen the sense of getting overly emotional about it.  No rending of garments, no tearing of hair. My mother taught me that.  Put on your black dress, make sure your face is clean and your hair is combed.  Get out the silver and the big coffee maker, call the priest, or call your sister who will call the priest. To me, there will always be the ritual, the process, of death, the circling of the wagons, so to speak, not the  upending emotional depths of grief.  But I wish I'd remembered that Mrs. Smitherman cried.  She was such a nice lady, so into her choir and music in general.  If I'd remembered, maybe I would remember offering her some comfort.  But I didn't.