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November 22, 1963. I was in the auditorium of Westfield Junior High School at a "pep rally" for our school's football team. The cheerleaders were bouncing and cheering and waving their pompoms The marching band was playing. Suddenly our principal came on stage right after a cheer, carrying a stand microphone with him. It made the usual screeches and blips as he struggled to get it working. Something was wrong. A couple of teachers were on stage with him; and they were crying. Something was wrong.
I had worked for John Fitzgerald Kennedy's campaign, driving brochures around town on my bicycle. I was just a kid, but it mattered to me. My family was Catholic. There had been crosses burned by the KKK on my grandparent's lawn because they were immigrant Catholics. We lived in Massachusetts. Kennedy was one of ours. There had been lots of talk about how if he got elected, "We'd all have to eat fish on Friday." (Most Catholics in America ate no meat on Friday.) Or that "It would be the Unites States of the Vatican". They implied that birth control would be outlawed. Jokes were made about JFK dividing Massachusetts into "High Mass and Low Mass". Rumors were thick that Rome, in the person of the Pope, would secretly be in charge of America. These are the things that I remember hearing as a child. There were more.
When Kennedy was elected, our family went wild. "Look! Look! It's one of US!" We felt we had finally become Americans 100%. Some could hate us, fear us, but JFK was president, and that was that. To this day, he is the only Roman Catholic president. We watched every press conference, took in every word about Jacqueline, and watched the antics of Carolyn and John-John. And suddenly we started to feel a new thing. America was envisioning herself in a new way.
In his inaugural speech, he referred to the "New Frontier", and said:
"We stand at the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, a frontier of unknown opportunities and beliefs in peril. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."
And, his administration began to tackle those frontiers. We had the Peace Corps, advocacy for major civil rights legislation, the Alliance for Progress, the Presidential Commission on Women, and many more initiatives. Monopolies were being challenged.
Not everything JFK did worked. There were certainly flaws. But America was moving, envisioning, dreaming out loud and putting money where her mouth was. We could hope that what we heard from the White House would be followed by concrete action -- not just more words. We could believe that wonders were possible for us as a nation, a community, a family and a world.
Doors started to feel open that had been closed. The government was working to make things better, to have better ideas and programs -- and we could feel it starting to happen. Again, there were flaws. But it felt hopeful in America, even to me, a kid in a small town, the grandchild of immigrant grandparents. I felt that if something was wrong in America, or the world -- it could be fixed, made right, made whole.
Then there we were in that school auditorium, the principal fumbling at the mike before he choked out --"Let me have your attention. Something very bad has happened. The president of the United States has been shot. He may be dead. School is immediately canceled for today. Go to your lockers and lave the building immediately for your homes. May God Bless America."
They didn't know if he was dead. That is what kept running through our conversations as we raced for our lockers. Maybe he'd be OK. We'd pray and he'd be OK. My friend Sandy and I went home, crying. We turned on the TV immediately. We watched the film of the shooting in black and white, unable to believe our eyes.
Then it is all a blur in memory. I remember seeing an image of Jackie in a bloodstained suit, looking like she was in shock. There was news footage of LBJ being sworn in. But something was wrong. Wrong in America.
And this time, it couldn't be fixed or made whole. A visionary light had been extinguished, and gradually our ability to dream big dreams with big hope as a nation,
