Rewind

Although we were deluged during the last week with images and remembrances of President Kennedy's assassination, I want to capture a few thoughts, and let it go for another twenty-five years.

I was in our Algebra II class with Mr Shane.  I was a junior in high school, a Catholic, a Democrat (thanks to my paternal Irish grandmother, Mary Ellen Donegan) and a flippant, smart-ass confident kid.  We lived in a Dutch Reformed community and a Catholic president was a big deal.

Our principal, Mr Purlee, personally delivered the news to each classroom.  We were stunned, tears ran down Mr Shane's cheeks, he looked as if he'd been poleaxed.  We were dismissed, the halls echoed with intermittent sobs.  I can still remember going to my locker, getting my coat and walking out the front door in a daze.  Our school was rural, all the bus drivers had been notified and we wended home to weeping parents, to unbelievable newscasts, to shocked broadcasters, to silent suppers with the television in the background.

Fifty years later, I get goosebumps writing about it.  It was awful.  Purely awful.  Fifty years later, I look at the footage and wonder what the hell - I want to look at it one more time and have it come out differently.  As the motorcade turned the corner into Dealey Plaza and into the ages, I am glued to the images, hoping against hope that it won't happen, that somehow he will deliver that speech, that Mrs Kennedy's pink Chanel suit will remain unstained, and that we will never have a conversation about where we were November 22, 1963.