Did you get the Beyond Thunderdome reference?
History today means that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated 50 years ago. Fifty years!
I can still remember it clearly. I was in high school, suffering through Chemistry class when the Principal came on the PA system and announced the assassination. He was weeping as he announced it. The entire school was stunned, some students were crying. We were all frightened. Who could conceive of such a thing? It was incomprehensible. Still is, sort of.
Often I wonder how the country might be different today had JFK lived to finish his term, perhaps to be re-elected. But that's a useless exercise, as no one can ever know. I wonder anyway and perhaps most of my generation does. His death affected the entire country, even those who had voted Goldwater. The Kennedy/Goldwater campaign was the first time I had ever paid attention to politics. I think it was the same for all the students at my school. The election just captured our imaginations and fired us up.
It was also the beginning of the assassination trend. We lost, within 10 years, Medgar Evers, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, even Martin Luther King's Mother, for heaven's sake. Amazing. Horrible. Overwhelming.
So many people today have only the vaguest memories of the day Kennedy died, or no memories at all. It reminds me of the day Jason came home from 8th grade and informed us they were studying the Viet Nam War in History class. I think that was the first time we felt old. Our lives were suddenly history.
I hope our country never has to suffer through another Presidential assassination. Ever. I have a feeling it would not be less scary to me now than it was when I was 16.
