JFK

A Boy Remembers JFK’s Assassination

The children came home one November afternoon to find their father home from work early. One look told them something serious had happened.

“President Kennedy has been shot,” he said and closed the door to the living room.

They played quietly until he called them in for dinner and they sat and ate without a word, not tasting a thing, then asked to be excused and took their baths and brushed their teeth without being asked and knocked on his door and hugged and kissed him good night well before bedtime. The nuns closed school the next day, a Friday, and their father called their grandparents in Mt. Vernon and put them on the train by noon. Their grandparents tried to act normal but no one had the will to say anything beyond the most necessary words, like “pass the butter” or “do you want some coffee cake for dessert?” Another gray afternoon passed, much of it spent before the TV watching LBJ being sworn into office next to a blood-stained Jacqueline Kennedy and listening to Walter Cronkite talking very slowly. On Saturday their uncle came over and they sat in front of the TV watching the continuous coverage.

They were watching when the Dallas cops brought Oswald out of the police station into the garage and Jack Ruby lunged out of the crowd and shot him in the stomach with a pistol. Oswald’s mouth opened and he clutched his belly and fell. Everyone in the living room gasped in shock, his grandmother putting her hand over her mouth, muttering “Dear God, have mercy on us” as the scene descended into bedlam and the cops wrestled Ruby to the ground. His uncle shook his head, stood up and strode out of the house, got in his car and drove away. The boy looked over and his grandfather was crying, silent tears running down his face in a steady stream. His grandmother got up and brought his grandfather a Kleenex and he blew his nose and made the girl turn off the TV.

On Sunday they went to their uncle’s house in New Rochelle. The children tried to run and play in the yard like they always did but didn’t have the heart, they felt disrespectful to the Kennedys if they tried to have fun and went back inside and stayed with their uncle. He just sat there, quietly smoking his pipe, staring into space with a vacant expression on his face. When he wouldn’t say a word on his own even though he answered when they spoke to him, the boy climbed in his lap and dozed while his sister played with her dolls at his feet and their grandparents brooded like statues on the sofa. His aunt fussed over dinner in the kitchen, as practical as ever. He wanted to kiss and hug his uncle, to make him feel better, but there was nothing he could do. His uncle let him sleep for a while, then lifted him up and put him down next to his sister and went for a walk. When he got up to follow him, his grandmother said, “Let him go” and he hung back, then went to the kitchen to see if there was anything sweet to nibble on.

Back in the city it was a long week. People cried in the street without shame. Their father seemed to be sleepwalking through dinner every night and the children did their best to leave him alone, come Friday they were back on the train to Mt. Vernon. Kennedy’s state funeral procession in Washington came on Saturday. They watched as the cameras panned over the thousands and thousands of people standing silently on Pennsylvania Avenue in their Sunday best, crying as the leaders of the world followed his casket on the black cart, covered by the American flag.

The boy noticed a groom leading JFK’s magnificent black stallion. He was tossing his head and kicking up a fuss and his grandmother pointed out that they’d tied his saddle on backwards to show his rider had fallen. He stared at the powerful, jet-black horse, shining muscles rippling with energy and strength, and he felt bad for the horse and he started crying, sobbing slowly, the tears running out of him like he’d sprung a slow leak. Then they got to the Lincoln Memorial and Jacqueline Kennedy was standing there with a black veil across her face and she leaned over John John and he stood up straight and saluted and taught the boy the meaning of courage.

Excerpt from “The Memories of a Boy” copyright © 2013 by Michael Wilkeson Thompson