On Losing a President
The President’s been shot, the President’s been shot. That was what I shouted while running through a women’s hair salon, causing many women, calmly reading while their heads were under hair dryers, to wonder who this crazy man was, running into their establishment and shouting. But I was out of control; presidents weren’t supposed to be shot, that was what happened in history, but not today. Presidents don’t get shot. And not President Kennedy. After all, this was Camelot. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, husband to Jackie Kennedy, the woman everyone loved. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, father of Carolyn and John, Jr. This could not be happening.
It was Friday, November 22, 1963. I was an insurance adjuster, on the road all day, having stopped at McDonald’s to get a sandwich. Hearing the news on the car radio, I raced back to my office, and ran through a nearby hair salon, screaming the news. I called my dear wife, but she was at work. My boss instructed me to finish the day normally. I tried, but found myself just driving aimlessly, and eventually I went home.
The next few days were all a blur. My dear wife and I sat, glued to the seats in front of our little black and white TV, watching an event transpire that we would never forget. Our minds kept telling us that such doesn’t happen anymore. Lincoln was assassinated, as were Garfield and McKinley, but that was stuff for history book stuff, certainly not something that would happen in our more enlightened age. How could this have happened? We were not at war, and President Kennedy was not viewed as holding unusual ideas on society or government.
And then, in the midst of all this, the assassin himself was killed, right on TV. YES, right on TV. Our world was crumbling right in front of us. Thanksgiving Day was just a few days away and, by then, our third wedding anniversary had passed, scarcely noticed by us. Everything was a blur, out of focus, no answers coming then, and no reasonable answers ever surfaced. Our country is still rebuilding from a death we do not understand, a loss that should never have happened.
John Kennedy died fifty-nine years ago today. He was a man with flaws, but a man with a vision that we have lost forever.