“The Summer of his Years ”

I had planned to publish a paper I wrote on Kennedy in College, called “My Tarnished Camelot”, but I

have not been able to find it. I know I have seen it in the last five years. So instead, some thoughts

from November, 22, 1963 and the weekend that followed:

  To my Mother who was born in 1918 the pivotal event in her early life was not Pearl Harbor, by then she had graduated from college and been married almost 9 months, but instead was the year 1936 when she was 18 and of course the event was the abdication of the British throne by George the 8^th (The Duke of Windsor,) over Wallace Simpson his future wife. To my mother it was the most romantic thing possible, and she told me she cried at the time, it was a visceral event for her. ( From my reading of history, it is a good thing for all of us that this shallow and vain man and was not the King of England and had any kind of British Bully pulpit prior to and during World War II.) She was 18 and in College at the University of Utah.

 To me a confirmed member of the baby boomer generation, the pivotal event in my life, is of course November 22, 1963 and the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That fall I had just started my first year of what we then called Junior High School and they now refer to as Middle School, at  Bryant Junior High School. I had just finished what was called first lunch and was just settling down in my Spanish Class, when I heard a loud uproar from other parts of the building. A few minutes later, although it seemed to be an eternity, an eternity with out knowing what was happening, remember there were no smart phones, no texts, email or twitter, and no one had entered the room from outside and said anything. I did notice that the teacher Miss Ohme seemed sad and removed, after awhile an announcement came on the classroom speaker and told us that the President had been killed and that school was ending. Normally we had a bus that took us back up the hill to the avenues, but no arrangement had been made to have the bus there, much earlier that day, so I started to walk up I street.

   I soon ran into my cousin through marriage Jon Roylance. His mother had recently married my Uncle Ranch Kimball, whose second wife Helen had died in 1962. Helen was my mother's only and older sister. We were not entirely quiet on the walk up the hill, but we did not spend very much time discussing the events of that day. At the corner of I street and 13^th Avenue I said good bye to Jon and walked over to H street and on the corner my families home.

My mother was in tears and like most American's we spent the rest of Friday , Saturday , Sunday and the funeral Monday watching the television coverage. I will add at this point in time, that my family for whatever reason was an NBC family. My Aunt Pat Fontaine, one of my father's sisters, in the early sixties had been part of the cast  on the Today Show. . I watched almost religiously the nighty Huntley Brinkley report and although my father and I would watch Walter Cronkite on the 20^th Century Series, we were not for the most part a CBS following family, other than for dramatic programs.

  There are so many poignant memories I have from that weekend, but they probably would not differ that much from most people, John John's salute, Caroline putting her hand under the flag to touch the coffin directly, A magnificent eulogy from Senator Mike Mansfield, “she took the ring from her finger and placed it in his hand”, Black Jack the riderless horse, The black watch bagpiper's, the demeanor of Charles De Gaulle, the outfit of Haile Selassie, the funeral cortege , people walking during various parts of the procession and the haunted figure  of Robert Kennedy. . And the throng's of people beyond a number I could understand, standing in line to walk by the coffin in the rotunda of the Capitol. With my father, Bob, I watched the first televised murder on Sunday of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby and I can remember as if it was last week, Tom Pettit's comments, “He's been shot!, He's been Shot! , Lee Oswald has been shot!”

  Like many American's we purchased the “Torch Is Passed”, book on the Kennedy's, I remember when they came out reading Jim Bishop's book on Kennedy and I have read many times and still have the original family copy of William Manchester's ,”Death of a President.” Over the ensuing decades I have read every major biography of John F. Kennedy, a lot, but not all of the conspiracy theory books, and Norman Mailer's Pulitzer wining Oswald Tale and Vincent Lugosi’s “Reclaiming History.” Just recently I have watched the PBS special's devoted to JFK and Nova's investigation. And yes, I have watched Oliver Stone's JFK several times, although it make me mad each time I have seen it.

 I have never fully understood why a majority of American's still doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was

a lone gunman and that Oswald acted alone. I suspect that it stems from the fact that how could some

one so regal in the good sense of the word, as John F. Kennedy was , be taken out by such a

non-entity. The scales just do not seem to balance in any way shape or form. Of course the fact that

Oswald was never able to explain his actions, has added to the question marks.

  If I have learned and come to understand anything from these countless book and biographies I have read, it is was what a compartmentalized person JFK was, how fragile for most of his life, his health was, how his friends tried to arrange things so that he was virtually never alone, I guess all those countless hours in the infirmary at Choate and the time he spent at the Mayo Clinic, took their toll, and that although Lee Harvey Oswald suffered from dyslexia, he was not stupid, in any sense of the word.I also can't forget Lee Harvey Oswald's mother Marguerite . And still feel sorry for his brother Robert who's life was for ever changed and who had done nothing wrong.

   I think about November 22^nd. Each year, and with this being the 50^th there has of course been much public discussion. I am not sure that this country has ever really gotten over the assassination of President Kennedy and although it was the first of a number of senseless murders, I always seem to link JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and RFK and finishing up with Kent State as being a line of horrible transgressions on our collective psyche . I remember saying to myself that I would be in my sixties when the 50^th anniversary came around and it seemed a life time in the future. It has been a life time and in mostly good ways this country has changed a lot.

 Today's title comes from a song just after the Assassination, the recording I first heard was on the NBC program with David Frost, “That Was the Week That Was,” which was broadcast on November 23^rd, 1963. and was sung by someone name Millicent Martin. The song was actually written by Connie Francis. I can still remember the whole song from memory. “Forget I can't, I still recall his eyes.”