Fifty Years Without JFK

November 22, 1963 is commonly known as “The Day America Lost Its Innocence.” It’s, also, widely accepted that nearly all Americans living at that time have detailed memories of where they were and what they were doing on that day. Since I was leading a very active life in the American Midwest fifty years ago, I witnessed the reality of these things. So, I can share some of what I recall about my related experiences, as well as offer my perspective on that loss of innocence.

BACK THEN

On that Friday in 1963, I awoke in our four-room (that’s four-room, not four-bedroom) home. It was in a blue-collar area of my hometown. I’d lived there with my single-mom and two siblings since I was born. Considering those circumstances, it may have been difficult to see from the outside looking in but life seemed pretty great to me. I was sixteen years old, I had just gotten my driver’s license and I had just finished playing a season as a starting defensive guard on my high school’s football team … we were undefeated that year. I still went to church where I received my salvation. I had loving relationships with my mother, my sister, my brother and extended family members on my mother’s side. I, also, had loving relationships with my father and extended family members on his side. In addition to family, I had a good social life. I was part of the “in crowd” at school. We had a formidable circle of friends and acquaintances throughout our community and I had my first “real” girlfriend … we were “going steady”. When it came to finishing my education and then finding success in work, things were looking pretty bright. My performance with high school studies was at a National Honor Society level, I had a couple of Junior Colleges interested in me as a football player, there was a state university in my hometown and even if nothing developed with scholarships, there were plenty of factory jobs available in town where I could earn what I needed for college tuition, books, etc. I don’t recall consciously having the Shakespearean thought “the world is my oyster” but things in my life seemed to be lining up pretty nicely.

THAT DAY

I don’t really recall what I did for lunch on November 22, 1963, but I had gone somewhere away from school. When I returned, I went into the gym where most other students who shared my lunch period were hanging out; waiting to go to whatever class they had for the period after lunch. Just before the bell rang, to end my lunch period, my “steady girlfriend” appeared and she immediately asked if I had heard that President Kennedy had been shot. She was a year younger than me and she was also known to be “creative” with the truth”. So, my instant reaction was something like, “Oh come on, Louise! That’s not even funny!” Some around us reacted similarly but there were others chiming in that they had heard it was true. Then, the bell rang and there was an increasing buzz of related conversation, as we left the gym and headed towards our respective classrooms. My post-lunch class was English. I don’t recall a thing from that day’s class except that, along with the other students and the teacher, I was most distracted by what I’d heard about the President’s shooting. That distraction peaked with an announcement, about 15 or 20 minutes into the class period, coming over the public address speaker, housed in a small wooden cabinet, centered above the blackboard at the front of the classroom. For some reason, I think the announcement was made by a female school staff member but I don’t really remember whose voice I heard. And, I don’t remember exactly what was said in the announcement, except that President Kennedy had been assassinated and that school was being immediately dismissed.

WHAT CHANGED

Whether or not it’s accurate to say that America lost its innocence on that day, it did seem that, from that moment on, the America I had been living in was very changed. Recently, in commenting on JFK and his assassination, I heard FNC’s Chris Wallace say that, “While Kennedy’s record may have been a bit thin, he was almost impossibly glamorous”. For me and many others, that glamor was the driving force behind being a Kennedy supporter. When JFK died, that driving force died along with him and the glamor.

Those who know me today might be surprised that I thought of myself as a Kennedy supporter. To help them understand this, I’d remind them that, at the time of the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy Presidential Debates, I had just turned 13 and I was in the Eighth Grade. Although I became a Republican in my mid-twenties and I became more and more Conservative as I matured, I was raised in a mostly FDR-Democrat family and really, at 13, I was pretty clueless about politics.

Kennedy’s allure, often called “the Kennedy mystique”, went way beyond the realities of politics. I think that was true for most Kennedy supporters, not just some Hoosier boy who wasn’t even old enough to vote. The family JFK was born into was exceedingly wealthy, giving him access to great influence, as well as an extremely enviable lifestyle. Added to that, he was quite handsome and athletic. He was a Harvard grad who went off to become a Naval hero of WWII and after overcoming severe injuries resulting from that heroism, he launched a successful political career, including his election to the U.S. Senate. This man, who was just a few months older than my Dad (another U.S. Navy WWII veteran), married a beautiful and most fashionable younger woman, who had been schooled at Vassar, the Sorbonne and GWU. And, they had two storybook-like children who, though a bit younger than me, were of my generation. I can’t imagine any American living at that time who wouldn’t have wanted to be like him or his Wife or one of his kids, depending on their gender and age.

Though Wallace may have been right about the thinness of JFK’s record, as President, it seemed pretty robust during his campaign and while he was in office. He certainly outclassed his opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Additionally, the Kennedy campaign provided a sense that it was time for the old guard to pass on controlling the direction of our country to our parents’ generation, in preparation for passing it along to my generation. It was sort of a mid-twentieth century version of Hope and Change, but, with substance.

Of course, JFK’s Presidential Term began with his historic inaugural address. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, still doesn’t sound like Liberal Democrat lingo to me. I’d argue that it sounds Regan-esque and it’s a far-cry from the “Gimme my ‘bama-phone” attitude of today’s Liberals. During Kennedy’s time in office, whether or not you think his record was thin, there were some very notable accomplishments. He established the Peace Corps, he set the U.S. Space Program on course to land the first man on the moon in less than a decade and he faced down the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis. These things, along with the fact that most of America seemed to be sharing my sense that “life seemed pretty great”, were reasons why many looked to Kennedy as a great leader and gave his leadership credit for our sense of well-being for the present and our optimism for the future.

Certainly, JFK’s assassination can’t be blamed for the details of my life that didn’t go the way I had hoped. It was inevitable that I’d get older, losing the girlfriend who was “creative with the truth” was actually a good thing, it was a broken left hip that ended my brief football career and working full-time while going to college full-time and maintaining the full social life of a fraternity guy turned out to be more challenging than I had understood. However, I believe the diminished sense of well-being and optimism can be directly attributed to Kennedy’s passing. No doubt, there are qualities about LBJ and aspects of his administration that can be pointed to as good but major factors like the abyss of the Vietnam War and the poor state of law and order in the nation significantly added to our attitude of decline. There was optimism about the Nixon administration at its outset and without a doubt, he had great abilities as a leader but the shame of Watergate, generally, trashed any hopefulness that presidency might have generated. Likewise, there was optimism going into the Carter presidency but the accomplishments of that administration were far overshadowed by his getting bogged down in the details of the country’s economic malaise and his ineptitude with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. It wasn’t until the election of Ronald Reagan that our nation seemed to regain that sense of well-being for the present and optimism for the future.

THE INSPIRATION

In his first inaugural address, President Reagan said, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” doesn’t that seem to map pretty well to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”? And, doesn’t Reagan pointing to America as “that shining city on the hill” have the same ring to it as Kennedy’s confidence in our ability to accomplish great things like putting a man on the moon in less than a decade? Regardless of the labels ascribed to a leader or the differences in their makeup, these are the things that define great leaders … the ability to inspire our self-confidence and our determination to prevail. If we, as a nation, truly hope to return to the significance we have known in the past and to achieve all we’ve dreamed of for the future, these are the first qualities we must look for in choosing our leaders and more importantly, we must see to it that these traits don’t die with individuals but they’re kept alive within the community.