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| The Book Depository Building in 2005 |
August 2005
I've just returned from Dallas, where I visited the infamous site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As I stood there, watching the everyday traffic passing over the red X's in the road at Dealey Plaza, it brought me back vividly to that day.
I am not sure what day of the week it was, but it was a school day, and I was an 8-year old student at Our Lady of Miracles Catholic School in Brooklyn, New York. The school was the brand new pride of the neighborhood, expanding each year, with my class advancing each year as the school grew. The principal of the school, Sister Dominic Marie, came into our classroom. There were 65 of us, in plain uniforms and neat rows of desks. We stood up when she came in. She hushed us and told us that we were all going over to the church to pray, because President Kennedy had been shot. She reminded us that as the oldest in the school, we had to set the example for the younger students. She didn't need to remind us that the President was Catholic, the first Catholic president, ever, and that as Catholics our prayers were desperately needed. Inside the church Father Simonetti led us in earnest Catholic prayer, including the rosary. I remember being terrified- sure that nuclear bombs would start dropping from the sky next. But the prayers went unanswered, as we were told that the President was dead. We were dismissed from school and sent home to our families.
For me, that meant walking several blocks alone, getting on a city bus, and riding to the stop around the corner of my house. As I left the schoolyard, I could see that our nuns, the source of discipline and strength for us students, were openly weeping.
I don't remember the walk or the bus ride home. Just turning the corner onto my street to find my mother and all of the other neighbors standing in groups on the sidewalk. Most were crying. To see all the important adults of my life crying frightened me even more.
Excluded from the adult conversation, I was a silent witness to my parents' shock and grief. The world seemed to collapse around me. The President was gone, my parents were inconsolable leaving no one to protect me and my young sisters. All the "duck and cover" practice in school came back to me, I was sure the end of the world had come.
In the next few day no bombs fell, a new president took over the office, and eventually I went back to school. The horror slowly faded from the front of my mind — in that respect my young age protected me from the greater implications of the event. Years later, we would visit the Eternal Flame in Washington, DC and I would cry, thinking of the President's children, so close to my age, now fatherless.
Now, on the 50th anniversary of the event, I still have a hard time grasping the global implications of that day, how it may have altered the course of history and changed the very fabric of American society. All I know is that after that day, I had no doubt there was evil in the world, and it had no concern for country, position, innocent youth or respected age. It could strike from the sky and change the world in the blink of an eye.
