November 22, 1963
It was a heart-scorching moment that, for those who remember it, no longer seems like yesterday.
It was a huge national tragedy and an international event that, by the
force of time, has finally become a still life, rather than living history,
black-and-white instead of color.
Those who can remember Nov. 22, 1963, are saddened by the memories,
but the hurt is not as acute as it once was. The scars
have faded.
Only time has made that possible.
The JFK assassination was the 9/11 of my childhood, and 9/11 is the JFK
assassination of my children's lives. My daughter was 9 when the terrorists
attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I was the same age when JFK
was killed. The memories of the effect of JFK's assassination on the grownups
around us - their shock at the murder of promise and the death of an ideal -
will remain forever with those of us of an age to remember.
But the memories are 45 years removed now; they only seem to emerge, like
pentimento in an oil painting, when some other such tragedy invites
comparison.
I guess it's true: Live long enough and you will see old wounds heal and
new ones open, and the new ones might be worse than you ever imagined
possible.
Pardon my meandering through the decades.
I have a habit of pondering time. It's a sort of hobby of mine. I try to
measure time and understand it. I am always marking distances on the American
clock. I'm fascinated by intervals and I note anniversaries of events.
I sometimes look back and discover the obvious, and the obvious surprises
me.
Consider the span of five years.
Here's what I wish to note about five years:
Five years was the distance in time between JFK's assassination and 1968.
1968 was one of the worst years in American history. 1968 was the year of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and, two months later, Robert F.
Kennedy's assassination. There were riots that destroyed city neighborhoods,
too, including some of Baltimore's.
When I was a kid, of course, the distance between 1963 and 1968 seemed
twice as long as it really was. I guess it seemed to me like a decade instead
of a half-decade.
But, all things being relative - and particularly time - five years now
seems to me like five months. Maybe even five weeks. (To my 94-year-old
mother, the former Rose Popolo, it probably seems like five minutes.)
And so, as I look back, I no longer see the assassination of JFK as clearly
distinct from those of MLK and RFK, but only the first in a fast burst of
insane violence in the 1960s.
In retrospect, those assassinations now seem compressed into an hour on the
American clock, a stunning loss of leadership in a wink of time. Layer in the
Vietnam War and all that flowed from that flood of history in the 1960s, and
it's amazing the republic survived.
But, of course, the republic survived.
It was scarred, but it survived.
I remember when the death of JFK would be marked, by the media and national
leaders, on its anniversaries - the fifth, and 10th, and 25th - but we seem to
have stopped doing that. It was too sad for too many, I guess, or, for the
millions of Americans born since 1963, JFK's assassination carries no
emotional punch; it is merely a tragic fact of history.
Time will treat 9/11 the same way, and probably sooner than later. At the
mention of the date, we'll remember blue sky and ruin, terrorism and heroism,
fear and anger and "Let's roll!" In time, and if we're lucky, 9/11 becomes
history - another in a long line of American traumas and challenges that its
people lived through and lived with, and somehow survived.
It was a huge national tragedy and an international event that, by the
force of time, has finally become a still life, rather than living history,
black-and-white instead of color.
Those who can remember Nov. 22, 1963, are saddened by the memories,
but the hurt is not as acute as it once was. The scars
have faded.
Only time has made that possible.
The JFK assassination was the 9/11 of my childhood, and 9/11 is the JFK
assassination of my children's lives. My daughter was 9 when the terrorists
attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I was the same age when JFK
was killed. The memories of the effect of JFK's assassination on the grownups
around us - their shock at the murder of promise and the death of an ideal -
will remain forever with those of us of an age to remember.
But the memories are 45 years removed now; they only seem to emerge, like
pentimento in an oil painting, when some other such tragedy invites
comparison.
I guess it's true: Live long enough and you will see old wounds heal and
new ones open, and the new ones might be worse than you ever imagined
possible.
Pardon my meandering through the decades.
I have a habit of pondering time. It's a sort of hobby of mine. I try to
measure time and understand it. I am always marking distances on the American
clock. I'm fascinated by intervals and I note anniversaries of events.
I sometimes look back and discover the obvious, and the obvious surprises
me.
Consider the span of five years.
Here's what I wish to note about five years:
Five years was the distance in time between JFK's assassination and 1968.
1968 was one of the worst years in American history. 1968 was the year of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and, two months later, Robert F.
Kennedy's assassination. There were riots that destroyed city neighborhoods,
too, including some of Baltimore's.
When I was a kid, of course, the distance between 1963 and 1968 seemed
twice as long as it really was. I guess it seemed to me like a decade instead
of a half-decade.
But, all things being relative - and particularly time - five years now
seems to me like five months. Maybe even five weeks. (To my 94-year-old
mother, the former Rose Popolo, it probably seems like five minutes.)
And so, as I look back, I no longer see the assassination of JFK as clearly
distinct from those of MLK and RFK, but only the first in a fast burst of
insane violence in the 1960s.
In retrospect, those assassinations now seem compressed into an hour on the
American clock, a stunning loss of leadership in a wink of time. Layer in the
Vietnam War and all that flowed from that flood of history in the 1960s, and
it's amazing the republic survived.
But, of course, the republic survived.
It was scarred, but it survived.
I remember when the death of JFK would be marked, by the media and national
leaders, on its anniversaries - the fifth, and 10th, and 25th - but we seem to
have stopped doing that. It was too sad for too many, I guess, or, for the
millions of Americans born since 1963, JFK's assassination carries no
emotional punch; it is merely a tragic fact of history.
Time will treat 9/11 the same way, and probably sooner than later. At the
mention of the date, we'll remember blue sky and ruin, terrorism and heroism,
fear and anger and "Let's roll!" In time, and if we're lucky, 9/11 becomes
history - another in a long line of American traumas and challenges that its
people lived through and lived with, and somehow survived.
