Funny how the memory works. Like Edward Curtin, author of the very interesting article about the JFK assassination today on LRC, on the anniversary of that event, I can vividly remember every moment when I learned of it in 1963. I was in fourth grade and playing dodgeball out on the school playground during recess. A teacher came out and told us all to come inside, the president has been shot. We all stood in front of a black-and-white television as Walter Cronkite announced that the president was dead. I can still envision and hear the teachers at the school (90% female) crying hysterically at that moment since it was so shocking for a nine-year-old to see all of his teachers in such a state.
Like Mr. Curtin, I can also envision like it was yesterday, sitting in my parents’ living room watching the TV coverage as Jack Ruby barged in and shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. Although I was only nine years old, I remember thinking, “How convenient; something is fishy here. How could they let that happen?” And then of course Ruby himself died mysteriously in jail, Jeffrey Epstein style, but supposedly of cancer. Or so we were told. My parents never believed the lone-nut theory of the assassination, and neither have I.
5:48 am on November 22, 2019
