"The death of John F. Kennedy became a participatory American tragedy, a drama both global and intensely intimate." - Time Magazine, November 14, 1983
On Oct. 7, 1945, President Harry S. Truman visited the southeast Missouri town of Caruthersville to speak at the Pemiscot County Fair at the American Legion Fairgrounds.
During his visit Truman stayed at the Chaffin Motor Inn in the downtown area of Caruthersville.
It was a historic occasion for the Mississippi River community.
Eighteen years later, in the fall of 1963, the Chaffin Motor Inn was still standing, but it had lost much of the luster it had during Truman's historic visit.
It was simply one of several aging buildings in the heart of a calm community.
Eighteen years later it was an ordinary fall day in Caruthersville without all of the excitement of a presidential visit.
But my Dad was there.
On Nov. 22, 1963, he was tuck pointing the Chaffin Motor Inn where Truman once spent the night.
(Tuck pointing, incidentally, is a masonry restoration process in which new mortar is put in between the bricks on an existing building, making it stronger and more water resistant. It's what my dad's construction business is based on, and I grew up learning all about it).
I don't remember the details of Nov. 22, 1963, because I wasn't in Caruthersville with my Dad. I was also too young to remember. I was 22 months old; my younger brother was only three months old.
But Dad remembers.
A man walking through the alley behind the Chaffin told him that President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas.
That was 50 years ago, and Dad remembers the day in detail, just as other Americans who are old enough to remember.
An article in the November 1983 Life magazine began this way: "Of the ... Americans now living who can recall the events that began on November 22, 1963, most know exactly what they were doing when they learned about the shooting of John F. Kennedy. It was that kind of moment-terrifying, deeply painful, beyond rationality-and one could struggle back to a bearable reality only by framing the huge unacceptable truth, a vital young president gone, within the banal margins of one's own life. That tragic event and the four days that followed it drew the stunned attention of the world."
A lot of Americans took off work once they heard about the tragedy. Schools were dismissed and the country went in to a collective time of mourning.
Years later, CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who had announced Kennedy's death on television in 1963, wrote, "There's no question the assassination was a serious blow to our national psyche-to have a president killed, and in particular one who had inspired a following among youth to the degree he had. The trauma was very deep."
My Dad couldn't start mourning or reflecting much that fall afternoon. As the provider for our very young family, he had to finish his work day. Every day was an opportunity to earn a few more dollars to take care of our needs.
But for almost 50 years now, America has tried to make sense of what happened in Dallas in November of 1963. And as a nation we still can't fully come to grips with it.
On Friday, we mark the 50th anniversary of that tragedy. The day will be one in which Kennedy will be remembered to be sure, but it should also be a day in which we examine how we help each other through such national heartache.
JFK's assassination was an extremely difficult time. And so was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986. And so were the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001. And to a lesser extent, so was the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.
Whether we realize it or not, deep heartfelt tragedy forces us to go on an introspective journey together and narrows our focus to what is most important.
Ben Bradlee was a friend of Kennedy and a journalist for Newsweek at the time of the assassination. He later became the executive editor of the Washington Post. Years after the assassination, he wrote in his autobiography A Good Life, "Death triggers an introspective search for truth and meaning. The death of a president brings forth a rush of experts to help or complicate this search, and their work is never done. The violent death of John Kennedy played on the natural paranoia of Americans, and made it the most analyzed death in the country's history. The evaluation, and re-evaluation, continues unabated ..."
David Wilson, EdD, is one of the assistant principals at Jefferson City High School. You may e-mail him at [email protected].