How do I write this without sounding overdramatic? The first half of my generation (maybe I shouldn't presume this for all) was -- I don't want to say defined by but it certainly was marked by assassinations. And it is our haunting.
I was in the fifth grade when JFK was killed and like everyone else I remember every part of that day from the principal calling an assembly to announce the shooting to watching teachers in tears as they rolled in TVs to our classrooms so we could all keep up with what was happening together. When I came home that day my grandmother was crying. Walter Cronkite (I think thats who it was) looked stunned as he reported on the events of the day. I was one of the millions who witnessed the live shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. And for days I remember a quiet in the air everywhere where grown ups would huddle and talk and shake their heads. They were all in shock and no one could explain to us (the children) the whys for this.
Fast forward to 1980. A few years shy of 30. I was driving my rickety little Tercel home from work and put the radio on to hear nothing but John Lennon's music on every station and then one DJ talking about his assassination. I didn't think it was serious at first. I really thought it was something more like that strange time where it was said if you played one of the Beatle's recordings backwards you could hear the words: "Paul is dead." But it was true and to me it represented something so sad for about my time.
Like bookends - JFK and John Lennon. Years before and in between were Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968. Jumbled in between and after were the failed attempts to kill George Wallace, Ford and Reagan and who else?
