The scores of television specials about John F. Kennedy started a week ago. Although 50 years ago I lived through that whole series of events, something always makes me want to watch the next program about his life and his death.
People always say that everyone old enough to understand what was happening knows where they were on November 22, 1963. I was in Mr. Peat's physical science class, in a tiered classroom at the end of a hallway. One classmate asked to go get a drink of water at around 2:30 or something like that. When he returned, he told us that he'd heard that the president had been shot. Of course, my mind was swirling. Shot. Where? How bad is it? Will he live?
Class let out a short while after we got the first snippet of news, and being that it was the last class of the day, I headed down the long hall and turned toward the wing where my locker was. The double doors of the art room were down that hall and just as I approached the art room, the double doors swung open hard and Joan Heffelfinger came out into the hall saying, "The President is dead." She was a polite, serious student who got along with everyone. I didn't doubt what she was saying, but my mind didn't want to hear it.
A different Joan and Barbara took the bus home, like I did. We didn't have school buses in Fairview. We rode the municipal bus that traveled between North Olmsted and downtown Cleveland numerous times a day. The bus stop was at W. 213th and Lorain Road and we didn't use money; we used bus checks. These were minted coins we bought at the school office for use on the bus. Joan, Barbara and I were sober and sad. We just didn't feel like riding the bus that day. It must not have been terribly cold, because we decided to walk home from W. 213th Street to W. 193rd Street. We crossed the street and started on our trek. St. Angela's is at W. 210th and Lorain, so a scant three blocks after we'd started, we decided to go inside the church and pray. We stayed about 15 minutes, I think. Then we started walking again. I don't know what was said, but we did talk on the way home.
When I got home, my sister was waiting for me (I lived with my sister and brother-in-law following the death of my mother when I was 14). She had been home alone and heard the news on the radio. She was just stunned; we all were. And thus, on that late fall afternoon in November 1963, we started on a three-day journey of loss and then a state funeral with dignitaries from all over the world.
No one is perfect; we all know that. We've all sinned and fallen short, but in the last months of his life, John F. Kennedy had changed. He had started reading the Bible. He spent much more time with his family. He and Krushchev were writing back and forth, their letters carried by secret couriers. He was going to bring the small numbers of military personnel home from Vietnam. He had kept us from nuclear war. And he was a very sick man, a man who had had other experiences of serious illness. He was in constant pain.
At the time I didn't imagine it, but these days I see a wonderful reunion with his baby boy, Patrick, who had died just a short time before. For John F. Kennedy was a man who truly loved children.
His life should be for us a call to service. From his days as a Navy officer, to his days in the Senate, and then his 1001 days as president, John Kennedy served his country and he was proud of it.
One of my classmates visited Washington, D.C. with her parents when John Kennedy was in the Senate. They walked into the rotunda of the magnificent Capitol Building and were just aimlessly walking around. A young looking man walked over to them, introduced himself, and asked if they would like a tour. He showed them around the building, pointing to this and that, all the while explaining the importance and the history of the building. They had just met John F. Kennedy, the Senator from Massachusetts who took the time to show a family from Ohio the beauty of Washington. In 1963, his body lay in that very rotunda.
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