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John Kennedy’s Death and How it Changed Us
I had to tell my children our president had been killed
John Kennedy, even with his publicly reported physical frailties, was a man with an almost mythical presence. He was young and vibrant, he had a beautiful wife and two small children, and, true or not, we perceived him as the peoples’ president — as close to being one of us, his wealth notwithstanding, as we were likely to get. He was the FDR we had been wishing for.
It was accepted, we thought, that modern American presidents didn’t die from assassin’s bullets. It was unthinkable. But John Kennedy did. Walter Cronkite broke the news to us and we were forced to believe it: At 1:00 P.M. Central Standard Time, on November 22, 1963, in Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas, the president died .
Not long after the announcement my seven-year-old ran into the house, wild-eyed and gasping. “The principal said we had to go home,” my daughter told us. “They said to hurry. I was so scared.”
My little girl ran all the way, a half-mile from the school to our house. Her fears were local; she couldn’t fathom that much commotion unless it meant that something bad had happened to her family. The death of a president was not something she needed to worry about, but the sight of her sobbing mother made her knees buckle and she joined in, crying because I was crying.
I cried for three days…
