50 Years Ago, The Day President Kennedy Was Shot

On November 22, 1963 I was a small blond child living in the faculty apartments in Morgantown, West Virginia with my parents. My father was pursuing a new life as a professor at West Virginia University after earning his PHD in Ag. Econ/Econ in Madison, Wisconsin. We were in optimistic times for my young parents.

Anything was possible.
And then, in a way it died.

I was a small child at home on a day that was seasonless-frozen on my inner lens-I say that because I would not yet understand seasons, not for several more years do I think in terms of seasons in my memory. This remembering is visual. I was born July 1, 1959, all of 4 at the time of this happening. But I remember the day as sunny and fairly warm. We lived on the top floor of the apartments and we had a small TV. It was black and white, and I was watching. From my spot on the linoleum floor in front of the TV I could see my mother washing the kitchen windows up on a chair, screen out, leaning way out to do a good job-windex in hand, paper towels. Dangerous really. Her eye was sort of on me. She was dressed like Laura Petrie. I watched TV a bit, and then decided this was important enough that I needed to go get her. Much like my young daughter Sophia told her of September 11 years later.
"Mommy, the President has been shot."

Rather big news for a toddler to deliver.
Mom reacted, that I so remember. She got down off that chair and into that room like a lightening flash. When SHE remembered the story, years later, I'm not sure I figured in her telling quite as large as she figured in my telling. And watched as she cried and reacted. I suppose that at such a young age it was instantly understood from then on Presidents were vulnerable leaders, people were about dying, world events had enormous consequences, certainly I first glimpsed my parent's world literally crack. Both of them, and their good friends Lenore and Tony Pavlick took this in as a national, state, community, town event. They sat together, stayed together and everything STOPPED. They were in true distress, and I remember watching that TV clean through the funeral with someone in their group always connected telling us all.

At some point Dad took me outside to throw a ball, hit me in the head as he was likely to do, hurt me enough for me now to shed tears, and they took a momentary respite to rejoin their own personal concerns being parents. I remember that day as relatively balmy and sunny-as my day is today- writing this out in California 50 years later-not in a training I ought to be in to see ipad apps demonstrated for ipads I don't have for my students by someone at the school lucky enough to be selected to have them.
No way would I recall that time in terms of "near winter." So at least I know in West Virginia it was a pretty lovely day-weather-wise.

I knew that Oswald was shot as well, in my internal pictures. We watched Walter Cronkite on our couch in an apartment with about five pieces of furniture total. My parents were so poor-I never knew that, not for many, many years. I think of 1963 as the times before we knew what we lacked, but valued what we were.

Years later my mother read every book about the assassination. She clipped articles. Mom was in times pre-internet, an avid reader and scholar, and so books and newspaper articles were how she addressed the concerns of conspiracy. She read and followed the Warren Commission. She did not believe that we would ever really get to the real truth, but I can say she believed the truth was suppressed. Truly she did have an unbelievably large collection of books on the death of this President, and that led her to a great deal of research on his Presidency-on that she really had knowledge. I would hate to say her innocence died-but it did.
That day.

Did she have a favorite theory of his death in the conspiracy vein? No. She was remarkably not someone I heard say-oh this is what I think happened. She simply collected and considered, and read those who had theories. My mother concluded there were too many forces that would want him dead not to respect the seriousness of this-and her research on Oswald truly alarmed her. She had a hang up for awhile about someone at the grassy knoll but I forget what that was. I DO KNOW that in my teens and through the rest of her life Mom got Kennedy books for her birthday or holidays or when we spotted them, the way you might give a collector of spoons or pink elephants new finds. Here you go Jean.
Her favorite was a VHS of the Zapruder film.

Mom died August 23, 2013. She did not make it to the 50th Anniversary of one of our nation's saddest days. Sad days would follow, RFK, MLK, other awful things. I remember all of that as my childhood. Literally marked by crushing blows against strides into a progressive, forward looking, hopeful future.

For me the music died on the day of her death, but for Mom the song that was written and she got to hear sung in Monterey many years later-American Pie- summed up how SHE felt about that day, November 22, 1963.

When I think of this, reflect, it occurs to me that here was the way things were going, the catastrophic event and then the long, awful spewing into the future the karma of it happening -not unlike the Zapruder film showering all of us with the split second JFK exploded across the frame-killed by a gun and a person that robbed the future. Mom wanted "the truth" and "understanding" from the incomprehensible I think. She sought to make known the unknowable. You can't be born in those times and not carry the collective memory.

This was what Jung spoke of in our collective.

As I look at the anger, division, meanness, I see September 11-the date that robbed my children as I was injured.
Damage. Then reconstruction, possibly healing, but never the same.
Bye, bye.

That is how I remember this day. Soon those of us of this day will be gone, but how long will it be that the imprint will shadow us?