Nov 23, 2023·edited Nov 23, 2023Liked by Jack Cluth
I was in eighth grade and I remember all the teachers around me crying. They canceled school and my mom and I sat glued to the TV for over a week. When we did get out, it was to go to a swim center on a Sunday morning, where, waiting for my dad to get out of the showers, I saw full on, the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. I was watching by myself in a lobby area. My oh my how we have crawled through so many terrible, uncertain times. Yours is the first reminder this day--thanks
Having viewed Oswald's assassination, real time, as a child, at that time in our history, must have been profound experience for you, Bob Jonas. It must have felt as if the very seams of reality were coming apart, because essentially they were.
I was in the first grade, when the principal came into the class room to inform "us", though mostly the teacher. I did not understand what I was being told, but I had never seen adults in such a state of helpless shock before. Hell, it had never occurred to me that adults could be so completely unmade, and by nothing more than a few words.
The only thing that shook me as much was watching live as the plane hit Tower Two.
The thing that truly shook me about 9/11 was learning, two months after the fact when my alumni magazine arrived, that one of my best friends from college had been on the 96th floor in the north tower and never had a chance to make it out alive. I now have his name and face tattooed on my left arm as my way of honoring him.
I "enjoyed" your reminiscence of JFK's assassination. I put enjoyed in quotation marks because your observations are as insightful as is typical, but there was nothing enjoyable about the event. And you're right, something palpably changed about our nation. I was 6 years old on that pivotal day. I have absolutely no memory of the 22nd. But I have a strong memory of the funeral on the 25th. I remember watching it with my mother and asking her why she was crying. She explained that the president was dead and that this was his funeral. Like you, at 6, I couldn't conceptualize what that really meant. But over time it became painfully clear to me. JFK had his flaws, but what really rankles is every time I imagine what he could have been, and what the nation might have accomplished, had he lived And to add insult the blow of JFK's death, was the death of his brother, RFK, 5 years later, who had every indication of being the person, who would have been the baton carrier, to bring about the promise that his brother was prevented from completing. But it was not be, another bright hope for the future was dashed. And MLK was also killed the same year to boot. In the space of just 5 years, 3 of the most inspiring, charismatic figures in American history, (and I would include Malcolm X too albeit much more narrower for Black people), that the nation had ever seen; and which we will regrettably ever see again.
Agreed. I often wonder where America might be if these people had lived to fulfill their promise. Yes, they were flawed, as are we all, but their vision might have resulted in an America much different from the one we live in today. And I think MLK and Malcolm X could have influence more than just Black America; perhaps that was what so frightened those that conspired to murder them.
I was in eighth grade and I remember all the teachers around me crying. They canceled school and my mom and I sat glued to the TV for over a week. When we did get out, it was to go to a swim center on a Sunday morning, where, waiting for my dad to get out of the showers, I saw full on, the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. I was watching by myself in a lobby area. My oh my how we have crawled through so many terrible, uncertain times. Yours is the first reminder this day--thanks
Having viewed Oswald's assassination, real time, as a child, at that time in our history, must have been profound experience for you, Bob Jonas. It must have felt as if the very seams of reality were coming apart, because essentially they were.
I was in the first grade, when the principal came into the class room to inform "us", though mostly the teacher. I did not understand what I was being told, but I had never seen adults in such a state of helpless shock before. Hell, it had never occurred to me that adults could be so completely unmade, and by nothing more than a few words.
The only thing that shook me as much was watching live as the plane hit Tower Two.
The thing that truly shook me about 9/11 was learning, two months after the fact when my alumni magazine arrived, that one of my best friends from college had been on the 96th floor in the north tower and never had a chance to make it out alive. I now have his name and face tattooed on my left arm as my way of honoring him.
I "enjoyed" your reminiscence of JFK's assassination. I put enjoyed in quotation marks because your observations are as insightful as is typical, but there was nothing enjoyable about the event. And you're right, something palpably changed about our nation. I was 6 years old on that pivotal day. I have absolutely no memory of the 22nd. But I have a strong memory of the funeral on the 25th. I remember watching it with my mother and asking her why she was crying. She explained that the president was dead and that this was his funeral. Like you, at 6, I couldn't conceptualize what that really meant. But over time it became painfully clear to me. JFK had his flaws, but what really rankles is every time I imagine what he could have been, and what the nation might have accomplished, had he lived And to add insult the blow of JFK's death, was the death of his brother, RFK, 5 years later, who had every indication of being the person, who would have been the baton carrier, to bring about the promise that his brother was prevented from completing. But it was not be, another bright hope for the future was dashed. And MLK was also killed the same year to boot. In the space of just 5 years, 3 of the most inspiring, charismatic figures in American history, (and I would include Malcolm X too albeit much more narrower for Black people), that the nation had ever seen; and which we will regrettably ever see again.
Agreed. I often wonder where America might be if these people had lived to fulfill their promise. Yes, they were flawed, as are we all, but their vision might have resulted in an America much different from the one we live in today. And I think MLK and Malcolm X could have influence more than just Black America; perhaps that was what so frightened those that conspired to murder them.