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- 1 year 5 days ago
- Posts: 6883
"Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas".
That's about all I can tell myself.
In the fall of 1963 I was starting the 1st Grade. So how much do you guys remember from the 1st Grade? Truth is, my 1st grade teacher was crying at her desk while us kids watched the news on the TV that was wheeled into our classroom that afternoon.
Yes I knew something terrible had happened but I was simply too little to understand the seriousness of the situation. I have no memories of the following few days as television hit wall-to-wall coverage of the aftermath of that shooting in Dallas.
The only thing I want you guys to know is that whenever I talk to people my age about the 1960's - we end up talking about the Go-Go 60's in the years after JFK died. It's as if the years 1960 to 1963 belong to a different decade altogether.
As this long ago event recedes into the mist of time, there will come a day when all the people who remember will be gone, leaving as the only "eyewitness", so to speak, that strange looking machine people in those times used to ride around in.
The Eldorado is dead. Long live the Eldorado.Are you sure you want to delete this post? Yes | No - 11 months 29 days ago
- Posts: 6883
After all these years I'm still trying to answer the question, what does all this mean? 
50 years ago Robert MacNeil was a young reporter for NBC News. For those of you that don't know, Robert MacNeil was in the Presidential motorcade, immediately behind the limousine.
All hell broke out after the shots were fired and the limousine sped away to Parkland Hospital. Robert MacNeil needed to get to a telephone fast. The closest building was the School Book Depository.
As Robert MacNeil approached the side entrance to the depository, the door suddenly flew open and a man came running out of the building, pushing Mr. MacNeil out of the way. Once inside, Robert MacNeil found two pay phones so he tried desperately to contact NBC News headquarters in New York.
While waiting to connect with New York, it suddenly occurred to Mr. MacNeil that the man who shoved him as he was running out of the building might've been the gunman who shot the president!
Robert MacNeil has retold that story many times over the years. And like me, Mr. MacNeil has noted how our national psyche was never quite the same after the JFK shooting.
People seemed "shell shocked" in a strange way that's hard to describe.
But I will go further than Robert MacNeil, something else was happening at the same time, a newer generation was coming of age by 1963.
I grew up during the last hurrah of the orderly, gentile 19th century mindset of the generation that saw through most of the 20th century up to that time. By 1963 there was a changing of the guard in American society. Respect, of all sorts, was giving way to a more demanding attitude. Deference and tolerance seemed harder to come by when compared to . . . say my Grandma's generation.
This is just my opinion for what it's worth.
But keep in mind that in 1963 when I was in the 1st Grade, it was a segregated "all negro" school. My home city was still racially segregated - the times were a-changing because it was time for change. My generation needed a new vision of America.The Eldorado is dead. Long live the Eldorado.Are you sure you want to delete this post? Yes | No