Like it was Yesterday

From Wikipedia

Introduction

Most of us have experienced moments that we can recall with vivid clarity years or decades later. I can recall where I was, what I was doing, and who I was talking to when the first reports of an aircraft flying into the World Trade Center occurred on September 11, 2001. I was born on November 23, 1963, the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. I wondered whether that moment, the moment when people were told of the assassination was a day people could remember with such clarity.

Included below are stories based on the recollection of four people who were kind enough to share their memories.

Skip Wood

All the teachers and students are called to the auditorium for an unscheduled and unexpected all-school assembly. That there is an all-school assembly in the auditorium is not unusual. That the students are being taken out of classes two hours prior to a Friday dismissal is very unusual indeed. But the students, all boys, and their teachers, also men, make their way to Noble’s large auditorium, where every all-school event, save the all-important athletics, are held.

As Skip enters the room he sees the headmaster, Elliot Putnam, “The Deke “as he is affectionately known, standing solemnly before the students. His hands are clasped behind his back. Skip smiles when he thinks the headmaster is looking toward him but Putnam turns away to another group of students. A few of the other administrators and teachers stand behind the headmaster like statues, their hands also folded. Something is up, Skip thinks.

The Deke is an imposing man. Broad athletic shoulders, chiseled facial features and taller than most in the room, he is a presence. He carries the stature of a Harvard quarterback, which, in fact, he was, until a certain Barry Wood, Skip’s uncle, took his spot on the roster. Though Putman has moved on from his football days, he still commands a field, though the field now consists of 300 or so seventh- through twelfth-grade boys.

Skip’s class files into a row of desks. He finds a desk and sits. As with every other assembly the freshman sit up front, closest to the headmaster. The sophomores, Skip and his classmates, sit behind the freshmen. The juniors sit behind the seniors and the seniors occupy the desks in the back row. The seventh- and eighth-graders sit in chairs off to the side.

Skip turns to watch the remaining upperclassmen as they settle in. He nods to a few of his linemates from the hockey team. He notices several are wearing their Varsity ties, blue and white stripes. Skip is one of the few in his class of sophomores whose earned a Varsity tie. That he earned his as a freshman is even more unusual.

As the last of the students find seats, a hush falls over the room. The boys all sit silently. They wait. All eyes on the headmaster. A stifled cough and then clearing of the throat are the only sounds.

“Students and teachers,” the headmaster says. “I will be brief. The President of the United States was shot today in Dallas, Texas. We do not know his condition but we know he has been gravely injured. That is all we know.” Putman looks slowly around the room across the students. He takes a breath and adjusts his stance. The boys can hear his shoes scuffing the hardwood floor. That moment it is the only sound.

“You will return to your classes in an orderly manner and you will be dismissed for the day in roughly one hour, at the usual time. That is all. Thank you for your attention.” With that, the headmaster turns and walks out a door at the back of the auditorium’s stage, leaving a stunned student body behind.

Donna Trout Wood

Donna sits in her high school English class listening to Mr. Janess, (lovingly referred to as “Ray Ray” by her classmates) go on about the form an essay should take. She fusses with the hem of her skirt and smiles to herself.

“A girl’s skirt has to be long enough to touch the tile as you kneel on the floor,” the principal had said. “These are the rules.” It had caused a minor scandal when Debbie, who had moved to the burbs from New York City, was sent home because her skirt was too short. Donna had to witness the whole thing kneeling test in the principal’s office, why she was not quite sure.

“The essay’s introduction should grab the reader’s attention and it should inform the reader

what the debatable point of your essay is.” Mr. Janess writes on the blackboard ‘Grab reader’and ‘Debatable Point / Thesis.’

From behind she feels a light poke as her friend, Georgia, passes a note. ”What are you going to write about?“ Donna half turns in her seat and shrugs. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

“At the end of the essay, the conclusion needs to summarize the argument and remind the

reader of the significance of the point being made.” Mr. Janess writes ‘So What’ and ‘Wrap it up’.

One o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Almost done, Donna thinks. Ten more minutes, then one

class to go.

But class is interrupted by a crackling of the classroom intercom and the principal’s voice. The speaker is scratchy in its own right but there’s something else, the noise of a radio in the

background.

“Students and Teachers,” the principal says. “I am sorry to interrupt but I have some important news.” He pauses. Donna, her classmates, and the teacher all turn to the speaker hanging in a corner of the classroom. The only sound is the static of the speaker and the unintelligible radio tuned to what sounds like a newscast. Then: “The President of the United States, President Kennedy, has been shot and taken to the hospital in Dallas, Texas.” There is a collective gasp in the classroom, followed by whispers. Mr. Janess tries to quiet the students to little avail. The rest of the announcement is a blur. They’ll go home at the regular time, just as they would on any Friday, but it is not just any Friday.

Donna rides home with her boyfriend in his sedan, the one with the modified exhaust pipes

that the boys all seem to love, but there is no revving of engines or Beatles cranking from the radio. The sound of the car, the music, the length of skirts now seems unimportant. What is going on? Was it the Russians? Not a year ago the whole school was called to the auditorium where they heard about the Cuban Missile Crisis. That mushroom clouds might be on the horizon, or closer. Fire drills became air raid drills where she and her classmates, while in elementary school, practiced drills hiding under their desks in fear of nuclear war. They were always reminded them that “this was only a test“ but that it was better to be prepared.

At home, Donna and her mother stand in front of the television as Walter Cronkite, the most trusted person in America, delivers the news. He reads flashes, the condition of the governor Connelly, the delivery of last rights, where the Vice President was headed. He holds photographs up for a camera. “Zoom in here if you can,” he says. He describes the President’s new official car, specially designed so that the President would sit higher so people could see him, he pauses, “but as it turned out today, so that an assassin could also get a good shot at him.”

Casey Hotchkiss Clark

Casey pulls into the driveway of the house she and Dick have rented. A small, single-story brick house with an attached garage. Just like the one next door and the one next door to that. 8021 West 17th Avenue in Lakewood Colorado. She turns off the car’s engine and turns to her six-month old baby, Ted, who sleeps quietly in a bassinet on the front seat.

The sun is high in the late-morning sky so the car warms despite the November cold outside. Casey sits, her hands resting on the steering wheel, as the engine clicks and makes cooling noises. Ted fusses quietly in his sleep.

She heard the news on the radio and still can’t believe it is true. Kennedy shot. The young, dynamic and energetic President seriously injured while sitting in the back seat of his Presidential limousine convertible as the motorcade toured through Dallas. Gravely injured by an assassin’s bullet. Was it a Russian? And the Texas governor also shot. Why?

She thinks of Dick, a principal at the John Earle School, an elementary school. Dick, one of the youngest principals in the state. How would he tell the teachers? What was he going to do? Would he have to go into every class, one by one? What would he say? Do you announce the news to the entire class? No, she thinks. The kids are too young. They would not understand. Does he whisper it in each teacher’s ear? Then what? Just walk out the door to the next class and expect the teacher to go on teaching? She wishes she could be there with him. Maybe to help. Maybe he could help her understand what to do, how to react.

Casey looks over the hood to the front door. The sunlight is bright on the concrete steps. Through the big living room window she sees the drapes are open, leaving the living room awash in light. Ted stirs and she realizes she’s been staring into space for several minutes. She pulls the door handle and opens the car door. She slides from beneath the steering wheel and steps onto the concrete driveway. Closing the door, she walks to the passenger side of the car and spots a neighbor. Casey’s met her but, being a few years Casey’s senior, they have less in common and seldom exchange more than neighborly hellos. Casey and Dick are new to the area so they are neighbors but not friends.

The woman’s heels click on the concrete as she walks toward the sidewalk. She pulls her overcoat close to her face against the cold.

“Hello,” Casey says.

The woman turns to Casey, offering an uncommitted smile. “Hello,” she says.

Casey opens the passenger door and pulls the bassinet from the front seat. Seeing Ted, the woman slows and smiles.

“Isn’t he precious,” she says, “and that dimple on his chin.”

Casey smiles at Ted and turns to the woman.

“Have you heard on the news?” she says. “Someone’s shot the President.”

The woman looks up from Ted and toward Casey and says “It’s about time.”

Sue Clark Jorgensen

There’s a rush to stand in line at the door as twenty third-graders wrestle with their coats, pull on their hats, and search for their mittens. Sue, the teacher, pulls on her jacket and smooths her skirt. It’s an early dismissal, half day, but the afternoon will be busy with parent-teacher conferences. The kids are anxious to get out the door and onto their busses.

“Straight line, please.”

Rubber boots squeak on the tile floor. The sound of nylon jackets rubbing against each other with the nervous energy of the beehive. Zippers zipping. Excited chatter.

“OK, kids, let’s walk in a nice line to the busses. Everybody have their things? Here we go, out the door. Michael, please keep your hands to yourself.” Michael, a curly blond-haired boy, retracts a hand destined for a ponytail in line ahead of him.

As she walks down the hall, Sue is struck by the image of a border collie herding sheep, moving around the group to keep them in line. An old man with a long cane shepherding ducks as they waddle before him. Maybe not that bad, she thinks, but close.

They exit the school and Sue helps a few kids find their busses. She walks with Michael and approaches the open bus door of his bus, where a stream of children climb aboard. The bus driver leans in his seat waving to Sue. Sue puts a hand on the open door frame and leans in.

“Did you hear?” he says with an agitated expression. He checks to see if the kids are listening and leans toward Sue. He whispers.

“Someone shot the President!”

“What?” Subconsciously Sue also looks around to make sure the kids don’t hear her.

“Yeah. It’s on the radio. Someone shot the President in Dallas.”

There is a commotion in the back of the bus. The driver looks up to the large mirror over the windshield and casts a disapproving look to someone Sue cannot see.

“Terrible,” he says, turning to Sue. He closes the door, leaving Sue standing on the sidewalk, staring at him through a glass door, and the bus pulls away.

For minutes Sue just stands, staring into space as a parade of busses passes before her. The President, shot.

In a fog she returns to her classroom and goes through the motions of preparing for her first parent conference. She flips absentmindedly through folders. She hears footsteps, the click of heels on the tile in the hallway and a gentle knock at the classroom door breaks her trance. She turns to see a smartly dressed woman in her thirties.

”Oh, I’m sorry. Hello.”

“Hello Mrs. Jorgensen , I’m Nancy. Timothy’s mother.”

Nancy comes into the room and shakes Sue’s hand. Sue gestures to a desk chair and soon the two women are seated on child-sized chairs facing each other across a group of four child-sized desks.

“I’m sorry” Sue says, “I just…”

“So you heard” says Nancy. “Terrible. Just... I mean… who would do that?”

The two women sit in silence for a full minute. Sue blinks at the open folder before her recognizing her own handwritten comments on Timmy. His strengths. Things he could improve. But she is at a loss for words. She feels in shock. She looks up to Nancy who is staring at a spot on the desk between her and Sue. Nancy too seems to be in shock.

“I’m sorry” Nancy says “I’m… I just.. I can’t believe it. I think… I think I’d better go.” Nancy gathers her purse, stands and walks out the door leaving Sue sitting alone at the child’s desk.

The next parent never comes, nor do the two scheduled after that. The school’s halls are quiet but for the footsteps of a few parents leaving their conferences. Soon Sue sees teachers leaving. The principal walks by and, seeing Sue, leans into the classroom.

“It’s ok if you want to go home” she says. And without waiting for a reply she steps away from the door and continues down the hallway.

Sue finds her way across the campus to the Junior High School and past the playground. A voice calls from a swing set.

“Hi Mrs. J!”

Sue waves absently.

Eventually she finds her husband, Neil, a teacher at the Junior High, and they make their way to the car. The ride home, to their small apartment right across for the cemetery made famous by the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is a blur. Sue tunes the Volkswagen’s radio to the A.M. news station but WBZ’s information is vague. The President has been shot in Dallas and gravely injured. They are searching for a gunman, maybe two. Updates come in.

Sue and Neil make their way up the stairs to their apartment. It is so quiet. She drops her things on the kitchen table and goes into the small living room where a tiny black and white television sits on a wooden table against the wall. Sue turns on the television. She sits on the couch and watches Walter Cronkite come to life on the television’s screen.

Afterword

Steve Clark, who provides valuable help with all of these Snapshots, commented that he was surprised at the lack of reflection and contemplation. After all, the stories all revolved around an event that had big implications for the world. Of course, the absence of reflection and introspection is largely due to how I am telling the story. But I also asked those I spoke with what they were thinking in the hours and days after the event. Sue Jorgensen probably described it best as a state of shock. She vaguely recalls sitting around for the weekend in front of the television trying to understand what it all meant.

Most of these stories end with Skip, Donna, Casey and Sue arriving home. What happened after that was common among all four of those who shared their story with me, they watched Walter Cronkite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PXORQE5-CY&t=34s