Some events are so big, they become the way generations synchronize their watch.
For me and my generation, it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We all have etched into our brains where we were and what we were doing when we heard that the President had been shot.
I was in 4th grade, in Spanish class after school. There was a commotion in the hall, and our teacher went out, and when she came back in she switched on the TV.
I remember seeing an arrow pointing to a wall-sized display of silhouettes of different kinds of guns.
The next thing I remember is walking up our front lawn, where my mother met me on our front steps, and I was shocked to my core because she was crying. Everything else was a blur, but I remember being allowed to watch an awful lot of TV, because the adults were all just sitting there, trying to take everything in.
I don’t remember much of it, however.
Years later, when I was doing film research for a documentary about those times, I watched it all in horrified fascination – as if for the first time. Perhaps it was the first time – the first time I understood any of it. Perhaps it takes years for that kind of thing to sink in.
For my parents, it was the second such watershed event, of course. In their lives, the first was Pearl Harbor.
I have heard the stories of where people were on that day, and how they heard, and the stories feel the same, although the circumstances were different.
Part of the fear, in 1963, was in not knowing whether our nation was being attacked, or not. In the background, then, was the Cold War.
In my class, we had practiced duck-and-cover drills just like fire drills. Some people remember squatting down in the hall, but I seem to remember being told to get under my desk, and even at age 9, having difficulty fitting. I remember asking my teacher if I should take my glasses off. As I recall, she gave me no coherent answer. I was impatient. Surely whoever issued such directives would also know what to do about glasses? Now, as a parent, I have a better idea what to make of her inability to answer. This was in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. – ground zero if ever there was such a thing. How can you tell a child that it makes no d***ed difference, you’ll end up a smear on the pavement, with or without them?
Of course, there was no nuclear attack in 1963 and life went on.
I grew up feeling like a passenger on a bus taking our nation past all-too-many more such shocking events: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968; Robert F. Kennedy’s on June 6, 1968; National Guard soldiers shooting and killing four American kids right on their campus at Kent State, May 4, 1970.
Perhaps the times didn’t strike me as unusually violent because I didn’t know anything different. Weren’t there always protesters outside government buildings?
A few years ago, some publication did a retrospective on an earlier anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death – perhaps the 45th.
What struck me most was how many people from all over the globe had felt his death personally: people in Mexico; Nigeria; India; Iran.
Because of Kennedy, these people had seen the possibility of a future for themselves that was better than the lives their parents had led, better than the lives that had previously seemed all that was possible – and all of a sudden, that bright hope was extinguished, along with our young president.
That is one of the reasons why Kennedy’s assassination is more than just something that happened to baby boomers. It happened to the hopes and dreams of people around the world.
We have been hit by many hard knocks, lately: 9/11; Katrina; the economic crash; Sandy – and there’s no reason to believe they are going to stop. But I am no longer just a passenger; part of what happens from here on out is up to me.
Hope is so much harder to nurture than fear. I remember watching my child build a tower of blocks, painstakingly, in nursery school…and then watching some other kid, with one swipe of his hand, knock it down. Knocking things down is easy. That’s why dreaming things, and building things, are the far greater achievements.
They are what matters.
