Nov. 22, 1963: The day that changed America

 

Today (Nov. 22, 2023) marks 60 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated during a campaign trip to Dallas. It was a Friday afternoon, less than a week before Thanksgiving, when Kennedy was gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald --- or by the CIA, FBI, Cuban hit men, the Mob or by an alien from outer space, depending on which crazy conspiracy theory you happen to believe.
But regardless of conspiracy theories, one thing is clear: The United States lost its innocence and idealism forever that day.
Kennedy’s assassination ushered in more than a half-century of mistrust of government bureaucracy and officials --- and that negativity toward government is stronger than ever in 2023 and shows no signs of dissipating.
 Although that may have been for the best, the deep cynicism that followed JFK’s death has nonetheless hurt the United States in the long run.
Vietnam and the lies that led to a wider war there and Watergate followed, and although those scandals pale in comparison to what’s been going on the last decade --- and especially since former President Trump, echoing Hitler, Mussolini and dictators everywhere, branded Democrats, the media and anyone who opposes him as “evil” and inspired an insurrection by promoting a pack of lies in order to brazenly hold on to power --- it’s clear that America was irrevocably changed that fateful day in Dallas.
I was an 11-year-old sixth-grader in a Boston elementary school when the assassination occurred, and have vivid memories of that day.
I shared them in this column, which appeared in the Nov. 20, 2013, edition of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s murder, and I’m posting those memories on my blog 10 years later as a way to recall one of the darkest days in American history.
The link to that column, as it appears on the newspaper’s website, is: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/kessler-the-day-america-changed/article_5b3660b9-7bbb-55aa-8224-7bb7a9c8c4b0.html
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If you are at least 55, you know where you were early on the afternoon (1:30 p.m. EST), when the news broke on Nov. 22, 1963, that changed the nation and a generation forever.
Even if you’re younger than 55, you know what someone is talking about when the date Nov. 22 is brought up without mentioning the person’s name – the date is so indelibly etched into both American history and popular culture that asking where were you on that date is enough. Everyone who was at least 4, but likely 5, has a story. Here’s mine:
I was 11 and a sixth-grader at the Roger Walcott School in the Dorchester-Mattapan section of Boston. We were told that the president had been shot and we were being dismissed. As chance would have it, I was a member of the school’s safety patrol and was a crossing guard, but saw no panic or distress on the faces of the students who were being dismissed. After all, it was a Friday afternoon a week before Thanksgiving, and if they’re going to let you out of school early, you go.
On the way home, my friends and I first broached the subject of the reason behind our dismissal. “It couldn’t be the president,” one of us said. “Maybe it’s the guy who imitates Kennedy on the comedy album.” (We were talking about comic Vaughn Meader, whose satirical album on the First Family was a hit at that time.)
The aura of invincibility then surrounding both the office of the presidency and this particular president, who at 43 was the second youngest person to hold the office (Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest at 42 when he took over after William McKinley’s assassination), was such that the only way for us to cope with the possibility that something horrific had happened to the president was to convince ourselves that someone else had been shot. (It was not yet known that he had died.)
All that changed several minutes later when I opened the door to our triple-decker in Dorchester. Standing at the top of the stairs was an ashen-faced man born one year after the president. The look on my Dad’s face said it all, but I had to ask.
“So it’s true, Dad? Is he ….?
I don’t remember exactly how Ike responded, but he was near tears and it was clear: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35^th president of the United States, had been killed. That unbelievable news was the start of what would become the first weekend that the country would stay glued to their TV sets.
That day, and over the weekend, we watched as Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the 36^th president. We watched to learn details of the funeral – and we were absolutely stunned – and numbed -- on Sunday afternoon when we saw the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, get gunned down by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement garage of the Dallas police department while he was being taken to the county jail.
That act would add enough fuel to the conspiracy mills to keep them going for the next half-century.
We, as most Americans, continued to watch the next day as the nation said goodbye to its president. I  can’t say that, at the age of 11, I knew that a period of unprecedented political tumult and upheaval would follow. I also didn’t know then that just five years later, Americans would see two passionate leaders – the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the brother of the slain president, Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy – gunned down two months apart. But on that weekend 50 years ago, my gut told me that the country would never be the same again.
 I don’t pretend to know why Kennedy was killed, but like many of you, I often fantasized about going back in time and trying to warn JFK not to go to Dallas, or to otherwise change history. Such a scenario has been the subject of TV shows, movies and books – with the most recent one being “11/22/63,” the 842-page book by Stephen King, which I referenced in an earlier column.
Sadly, the teacher in Stephen King’s book is able to go back in time and stop the assassination, but the world he returns to in 2011 is almost unrecognizable to the one he left, because  the threads of time were so shattered by the fact that JFK lived that a lot of other history was changed, and none of it positive, according to King.
Stephen King’s novel is only a fantasy. But as we look back this weekend – and as the conspiracy theorists suggest all kinds of wacky alternatives to Lee Harvey Oswald as the killer – let’s take a few moments to remember how much JFK’s death changed the nation.
And let us resolve to live up to the ideals of being better Americans, which JFK tried to instill in a nation that was much younger and more confident in itself.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor and can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com