The whole family sat there, Michael on the floor’s braided rug, dog by his side. All sitting stock still, faces absorbed in the screen. Losing themselves. Michael’s lithe pale hand brushed the dog’s unsettled fur absently, still piecing together the images replaying on the screen. Listening intently to Walter Cronkite’s elegantly unsettled pronouncement, the small, thin brown-haired boy struggled to take it all in. Over and over again flashed recycled versions of the same scenes.
President Kennedy, iconic household figure, had been shot, a grainy, faded home-made film, the last anyone would see before blood was first glimpsed on Kennedy’s face, as his wife weeped trying to support her husband’s crumbled body. Michael heard it all described on T.V., piece by piece, as a vague picture of what happened was gradually pieced together.
There was only so much polished television reporters could reveal to the searching public. Still, in that fatal moment, reporters could not be the people’s prophets. Walter Cronkite especially made a lasting impression on Michael, as he recollected the once-composed man bowing his head, trying to hide fresh tears.
And all the nation was left to watch.
Michael , a nine year old fourth grader, recognized the President’s name and had watched the Inaugural Address three years prior. He knew few specific details about Kennedy, but he liked what he saw of the man. And he felt a little anxious then. For the President, the symbolic authority of his nation, was dead. Could his world, his very way of life, survive after the only leader he’d ever known was so effortlessly wiped away?
Michael’s parents tried to reassure him the best they could, though they were shaken up themselves. They explained that their country, their government would still continue on. They insisted their life wouldn’t change.
Michael’s parents still feared the future. While they had grown up during World War II and had heard many atrocities of war, since then the country was relatively peaceful. Deep down, nobody then believed such an assassination could happen, its torments were so foreign to the security they had begun to develop, the suburban utopia suddenly thrust into the midst of brooding conflict. For Rockland, Michael’s home at the time, was a small close-knit community, a working class town. Most people tried to help each other out, everyone knew each other and many had lived their entire lives here. Few people in his neighborhood locked their doors at night, there was little crime.
At first, many people were left to wonder whether this was a sign of the future. Still anxious over the Cuban Missile Crisis, many people around Michael suspected the murder was an indication of war’s re-emergence on a national scale.
Searching for a re-assurance, families sat in their living rooms, united in vulnerable confusion. And Michael, just a child, was carried into that world, and would never forget.
Michael was dismissed from school early that day. It was 2:00, in the middle of class at Holy Family School, a parochial school in Rockland. It started off as just another day. As routine as the uniforms students wore. A light blue shirt, dark pants, and a dark blue tie with three simple emblematic letters on it: H.F.F. Always the same, always predictable.
It was the middle of a lesson. Michael’s teacher stood before the class in a black nun’s habit with the pin-up white cardboard bib, long skirt stretching to the floor in imposing order. Mid-sentence of her lesson, there was a knock on the door and the teacher was called out of the classroom.
The children were left alone, waiting, expecting the lesson to resume. The lesson never did.
When she returned, the nun’s face betrayed something was amiss. “Go, just go! Go to the church across the street”, the nun told the class. The children lined up single-file and marched to the Holy Family Church’s beckoning gates.
The class climbed the brick structure’s solemn granite steps. The upper building was majestic, with high ceilings plastered in colorful painted scenes. The children were brought to the downstairs chapel, where the ceiling was lower and the furnishings plainer, more compact. There the students attended a religious service commemorating Kennedy, and there they were first told the truth. They learned that President Kennedy had been shot and critically wounded. It was a short mass, with prayers for the President’s recovery and for his family. Though it was clear the priest was upset, the mass was conducted just as it always was. Some of the nuns cried a little.
After the mass, the children filed out of the church to the bus to take them home.Then Michael learned Kennedy was dead. Few children spoke that afternoon. One of the first stops, Michael got off the bus and walked back home. It was Friday and he did not go out or play. Monday would be the President’s funeral, and Michael had that day off to watch the ceremony on the family’s 19’’ black and white screen. That screen had become all-too-familiar that weekend. It was where the family spent much of their time, watching as reporters tried to piece together what had happened.
Michael felt many things that weekend. He wondered how anyone could willingly bring about the death he’d seen. Everyone began to question a sense of security once taken for granted, unquestioned. The President was vulnerable, and thus the very nation he guarded, could also be vulnerable.
Michael’s mother said the rosary and a few other prayers with her children the first night after the assassination. Then, after the funeral, life would slowly resume.
News coverage would gradually die down, and families turned away from their private television sets.
But still Michael would never forget.
End Notes:
Phone interview with Michael O’Brien, Plymouth, MA
End Notes:
Phone interview with Michael O’Brien, Plymouth, MA
Phone interview with Joanne Sartori, Andover, MA
http://www.massbenchmarks.org/statedata/data.htm, Total Population 1930-2010-Excel Document
JFK Initial report-Walter Cronkite, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I
ABC TV Coverage- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y36DbAmUKw4&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy
“Nation: The Assassination”. Time Magazine. 29 November 1963.
“Nation: The Last Week”. Time Magazine. 29 November 1963.
“The Presidency: The Government Still Lives”. Time Magazine. 29 November 1963.
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