What Were You Doing....

...when JFK was assasinated?

I had just returned from Boston where I was working in the high tech zone around Route 128 in a technology segment then called data processing. I had been training with MIT and visiting different sites around Massachusetts while taking classes to learn every aspect of the computer and its applications. But like all good things, it came to an untimely end when my employer found itself swimming in debt and unable to compete with the leader in the field and needed to cut costs. And unsure as to whether it wanted to continue to invest in a field dominated by only a handful of companies. Personally, I saw the toll on the staff and thought that there had to be an easier way to earn a living and decided to come home to New York, the town of my birth.
On this day, I was taking a three hour interview at Prentice Hall in New Jersey.
I had spent the three hours meeting several different bosses, filling out forms, taking tests and just learning more about Prentice Hall’s very diverse operation.
I left the interview just after 3:00 in the afternoon and was feeling
quite bullish about the interview. I got into my car and started to drive south from the Pallisades to the George Washington Bridge. On the way back, trying to unwind, I flipped on the radio. There was something about someone being shot. It was a president of a company according to what I could gather. I wondered what company executive got shot and whether it was serious.
I didn’t get too worked up about the radio report until I got to the toll bridge at the GWB and found the toll taker unable to speak over her tears.
She told me the president had been shot!
I knew immediately that she meant the president of the United States….My mind flew in a thousand different directions. It was like I was moving forward in slow motion; all of my senses switched to defense mode…The first thing I noticed which I thought was highly unusual was the hundreds then thousands of cabs flooding the arteries out of the City that I could see from my vantage point high above the river. It seemed that everyone had decided to go home or to leave the office early.
I stopped for a moment to call home but there was no answer. I began to worry about mom and dad who were big supporters of JFK. There was nothing to do except stay in the traffic pattern across to the Parkway and out to Queens where I was staying temporarily.
Later the report came on that the president was dead.
I was in shock. It was impossible. It could not happen like that to someone who held such hope for an America during the Cold War when we worried that war was never far away.. I didn’t know what to do. I had always been a supporter of JFK. I had even stood on the sidelines when I heard that his limousine was coming through. I had even traveled to the Cape but never got to see the man who seemed to offer such promise for this country. Now, he was dead. I was devastated.
By the time I got home to my folks place, I learned that everything was okay with them.
But I knew I couldn’t stay put especially this evening. My friend, Tom, had previously made arrangements for us to go on a double-date that evening in mid-town Manhattan. My scheduled date was with a French Algerian gal who lived with her mother, both émigrés from the civil war in Algiers. She had escaped during the revolution when France was trying to get Algeria to buckle under and employed harsh tactics and treatment to get the people to fall into line. Their methods had the exact opposite effect. I had known Arial from other parties and was looking forward to our getting together. Now, everything was changed. I called everyone and each of us was despondent and desolate. Nevertheless, it was decided that there was no point in being alone each with our own thoughts. We met at Arial’s home and the television was on. I couldn’t forget it. The death reported over and over again. With details flooding the screen; yet, we all sat there immobilized as if we could gather the energy to do anything. There were few words exchanged as the screen mesmerized us. We were all just sitting there crying. We sat there as if we were glued to the couch for the better part of the week. Of all the things I remember, I think I remembered most the TV coverage of the whole ordeal—from the assassination to the reluctant Black horse, the solemn procession to the little boy clutching at his mother’s knee and his mother’s courage..

I did not realize that much later, that little boy would be a friend of my son-in-law and working for a friend of mine as an Assistant DA. I did not realize then that I would be invited to a hay ride with John Kennedy or asked to go tubing down the Aesopus with John and 34 other ADA’s working for the New York Prosecutor’s office. Nor could I imagine that I would get to shake hands with Bobby before he, too, had his life cut short. But past is prologue. These days I think of what might have been had JFK been allowed to live. And I think about how different our world is today when the country is so divided in so many ways and how limited and untalented our leadership at making this a better world to live in. One can only hope that we will demand a higher standard in the leaders to follow and that they will rise to the occasion as JFK did during his foreshortened life. I thought back about it. What Kennedy managed to accomplish in his too short reign was to make us proud to be Americans and to give us a national purpose. One can only hope that we will rise from our present nadir with new enthusiasm and zeal for an America that speaks for democracy, freedom and hope.