Generational Passage

It changed everything.  For those of us alive at the time it was a watershed moment.  Boomers like me can instantly tell you where they were when the news broke that the president had been shot.  It was the end of childhood innocence and the birth of a scepticism that persists today.  

I was in ninth grade study hall studiously not studying when the school intercom began to carry the news from Dallas.  The surreal broadcast emanated from WHO radio in Des Moines, the closest network affiliate to our small  northwest Iowa town of Spencer.

  

How could this be?  This was America.  People were hardworking, god fearing, upright defenders of  the free world.  Our president was the man responsible for the most powerful nation on earth.  The generation in charge, our parents, were the people who saved the world from Hitler and the Emperor of Japan.  Finally, after catching their breath from that massive undertaking, they had elected one of their own, John F. Kennedy,  a young decorated Naval veteran as president.  He was a Catholic--the first--with a beautiful wife and two lovely children.  He was also a leader who believed in a strong defense, lower taxes and was pro-life just like many other Democrats of the day. His successor, LBJ,  a shameless political opportunist, was largely responsible for steering the party into the ditch on the left where it remains mired today.   The economy was humming, the war in Vietnam barely on anyone's radar and the Russians had just blinked after being caught placing missiles in Cuba.

When Walter Cronkite, the "go to" newsman of the time,  confirmed that the president was dead school ended for the day.  Local high school football games were canceled nationwide.  Adults and kids wrapped up everything early that day and headed home for one of the strangest and saddest weekends in memory.  People sat transfixed before the glare of black and white television screens watching the almost Shakespearean tragedy unfold.  News anchors looked exhausted and every face sad.  

The Top 40 radio stations that were the drumbeat of my generation dropped the Beach Boys, Dion and Fats Domino for the somnabulistic drone of funeral dirges interrupted only by hourly newscasts featuring only  THE story.

Blame began almost immediately.  Finger pointing from the left centered on a climate of right wing hate said to be prevalent in Dallas at the time.  All of this in spite of the obvious fact that Kennedy had been felled by a bullet fired by a Castro loving little communist named Lee Harvey Oswald.  Naturally, on Sunday,  conspiracy theories exploded as Oswald was shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.  

Conspiracy?  Who knows?  Though it is uncharacteristic for even two people to keep a secret for fifty minutes let alone fifty years, maybe there was some nefarious plot to kill JFK.  I doubt it, but will keep an open mind.

Of one thing I am certain:  Fifty years ago today my generation began a transition from youthful optimism to a more realistic and educated cynicism.   More sobering and still haunting, we watched  overnight as our parents became at once and forever no longer young.