The first time I became aware of the young
Junior
Senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I was in a high
school history class in a group discussing current events. One
student in our group presented his commentary on Senator Kennedy,
after which he passed around the target article, including the
Senator’s picture. Immediately I was hooked on what in my
imagination was the classic American ideal of a leader that I had
formed in elementary school while reading the red cloth covered
books: a childhood series of biographies of famous Americans-- Abe
Lincoln and Ben Franklin.
Sporadically
I began to follow news of him. This handsome, energetic, well spoken,
funny and intelligent senator from Massachusetts incited my
imagination to expand to new definitions of what Americans had
been—what we were—what we could be. Our best youthful
spirit expressed in my image of Jack. And as I
followed him
from the Senate to his announcement to run for President, I became
committed to the movement to elect him.
July
1960: Home from college for the summer, tensely stationed in front of
the TV screen, I watched the National Democratic Convention in Los
Angeles. It was a dazzling political pendulum. Back and forth rang
the names of possible presidential candidates from state to state.
Dauntless,
I stuck it out through the wee hours until the last delegate cast his
vote; my candidate was nominated on the first ballot! Exhausted but
inspired, I posted a pathway of signs over the house for my family,
who feeling pretty sure of JFK’s victory, had deserted me for
bed.
Then
still not satisfied with my incorrigible energy which demanded
special action, I sent a telegram to the Senator at National
Democratic Headquarters in Washington offering my help in the coming
campaign.
Shortly
thereafter, I received a letter typewritten by a secretary, but
signed in ink by, I believed, John F. Kennedy himself. Then, back at
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (known then as WC or
Women’s College of the University of North Carolina), I
dutifully followed Senator Kennedy’s advice to participate in
the Presidential Campaign on campus through the Young Democrats’
Club.
In
September of 1960, an exciting opportunity to serve
came for
me. That afternoon my roommate rushed into our dorm room out of
breath. “He’s coming here,” she exclaimed. “And
we’re going to be Kennedy Girls; we’ve got to find
red, white, and blue outfits now!”
So
a few days later, adorned in our quickly borrowed red, white and blue
skirts and blouses, we set out for the Greensboro Airport, where we
were given buttons, badges and campaign boxes and quickly instructed
on how to collect Dollars for Democrats from the
crowd before
the Senator’s arrival. Then to our minds, impossible but true,
we Kennedy Girls, as we named ourselves, would
escort our
candidate from his plane to the speaker platform and, after his short
speech, back to the waiting plane.
From
my privileged platform seat on that dedicated day,
I tried to
crystallize in my brain Senator Kennedy’s brief remarks
floating to me in his charming Massachusetts brogue. But later,
though I labored many times, I could not recall a single word.
And
as we dreamily led our treasured guest toward his waiting plane, the
crowd, who had been roped off from the Kennedy entourage, suddenly
constricted around me, crushing my moneybox against my chest,
knocking my barker hat sideways. What was happening; where was my
President?
This
frantic scene of Senator Kennedy perplexing his bodyguards, of
instinctively changing directions reaching for hands in the eagerly
awaiting crowds would become to his supporters one of his endearing
behaviors.
But
just as suddenly as I had lost him in the crowd, he again appeared
just in front of me. A thunderstruck schoolgirl, I gazed up into his
handsome, deeply suntanned face, his clear blue eyes and that famous
shock of golden brown hair.
More
engaging even than his photographs, with dazzling smile and good
humor, he extended his hand, thanking me for my support. I knew
he was extraordinary. Still clutching my moneybox and my campaign
hat, I let go long enough to place my hand in his and mustered only,
“You’re welcome and good luck.” Then his bodyguards
recovered and circled him again, whisking him to the ramp of the
waiting plane. He vanished.
A
celebrity among the Young Democrats that night, I discovered that I
was the only student who had met Jack Kennedy, albeit briefly, and as
I basked in the last fleeting magic of those precious seconds,
someone remarked enviously, “I would never wash my hand.”
There
would be so many poignant, memorable, tender, passionate, humorous,
and historic times in the Kennedy Years: Rose
Kennedy
introducing her son…the Nixon-Kennedy debates…the first
inauguration ceremony televised live…”ask not”…Jackie,
John-John, Caroline in the White House…President Dad in his
rocking chair…the trip to Ireland…the death of little
Patrick…the heartrending struggles and landmarks of new
freedoms for minorities…the Cuban Missile Crisis…and
finally those soul shaking moments that ended them.
November
22, 1963: my dad’s 46th birthday; he was the
same
age as President Kennedy. I was a teacher in Virginia Beach,
Virginia. Military representatives from Dam Neck Naval Base were
lined up car by car around our athletic field at Kellam High School
for a procession at the close of our patriotic ceremony—the
presentation of American flags—the main flag to be raised each
morning from our official flagpole on the front lawn and the
accompanying smaller ones to be mounted above each classroom
blackboard.
In
respectful silence we noticed that the radios on the military cars
were beginning to sputter. Then we saw a Naval official run across
the field with a message for our Principal, Jefferson Davis. We
stirred slightly with a growing discomfort as they talked quietly.
Jeff’s face was grave. He walked quickly up to the microphone;
the military cars moved in a line towards the gate at the end of the
field.
The
speaker knowing only that something was terribly wrong instinctively
moved away for Jeff to announce the dreadful news: the President had
been severely wounded in Dallas. The program suspended, we returned
to our homerooms for further instructions and news, but before we
were settled, the intercom confirmed our worst fears—that John
Fitzgerald Kennedy had died at 1p.m..
In
stunned silence and disbelief, we teachers, guidance counselors and
administrators moved like automatons to console sobbing students and
each other. The intercom came on one last time to announce that
school was closing immediately; the buses were already warming up.
Our
tears bonded into the strangest silence I had ever known: bodies
picked up scattered belongings; feet moved into yellow hulking dread.
And in my twelve-mile drive home every car beaconed
the
mystery of our sorrow.
For
days it seemed, no one came or went. That silent vacuum imprisoned
America. My housemates and I sat in front of TV.--
vacant…immobile…shrouded with the eternal grief of the
assassination of our President…watching over and over the
Dallas book depository, the parade, the fatal shots, our hope
slumping over leaving us; Jackie Kennedy climbing over the
convertible trunk in her expensive blood-stained suit and pillbox
hat, groping for the extended hand of one of the motorcade
bodyguards. And finally, stranger still, we watched the shooting
death of Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV.
The
dismal dream continued and we wondered if it would ever end: we knew
that we would never be the same; that there would remain a part of us
that would be disconsolate. We moved only for the most insistent
human needs and all of us walked in the procession beside the
riderless horse to make our final salute with little John-John to our
fallen hero—in our armchairs in front of TV.
Reflections on a Fallen Hero is
a non-fiction narrative, memoir style, tracing my high school
idealistic crush on then Junior Senator, John F. Kennedy, to my entry
into his presidential campaign through the Young Democrats Club at
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to the events at Kellam
High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where I was a teacher on the
day of assassination and finally to the experiences of post-week
assassination.
