44 Years ago next Thursday - Hope Died

[NewHampster]

The hope of my Mother's generation was shattered and my generation never has fully recovered our trust in anything. We thought we had but Bobby is another story.

I was in 7th grade and that day is imprinted on my mind even more than the first time I had sex. Well that might be a stretch, but I remember leaving school in a daze and forgetting that I had ridden my bike that day. Some jerk stole my bike out of the rack that day but the police actually recovered it.

What I remember so well is how hard it was on our teachers. We were basically locked down while they went to get the news and decide how to handle it. My teacher, the nastiest old English teacher, came in crying and said President Kennedy is dead and we were dismissed for the day. Everything was a daze and would never happen like that now. They forgot that some kids needed buses or had parents that worked. They just said to go home and we did.

A new movie, Oswald's Ghost, explores the profound effect Oswald had on history. NPR interviewed Robert Stone about his new movie which although premiering in NYC and showing in LA is primarily a TV event in January. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16400399

[tomg]

1. I was going in 9th grade.

That day we had our first wall-to-wall carpeting put in. My mom (a dem her whole life and a solid union woman and an Irish Catholic to boot) had waited forever until we could afford that carpeting. Later. she told me that she came to hate that carpet, because whenever it came to her conscious, she thought about Kennedy.

One of our teachers - I was at an ICB school ( Irish Christian Brother) - thought it was a bullshit rumor, and made a joke that "it must have been Nixon". The next day, the guy came in and apologized to the class. He was devastated. What a start: John, to Malcolm, to Martin, to Bobby.

Thanks for the reminder.

[JDPriestly]

41. These assassinations are what led to the conservative victories.

They led to Nixon and Reagan and the Bushies. The deaths of these great men were horrible enough, but what filled the vacuum their deaths left was an even greater tragedy if that is possible. Without the murder of JFK, there would have been no Reagan, and without Reagan, no George W. It makes me want to cry. We are still a nation in mourning, and it will soon be 45 years.

[Thothmes]

46. Remember

worse than Nixon, it led to a presidency by LBJ of Viet Nam fame.

[JDPriestly]

52. How right you are. He was another Brown & Root/Halliburton

protege.

[shance]

2. "Oswald's Ghost" - except that Oswald didn't commit the crime

Perhpaps the real "ghosts" that should be explored are those who killed President Kennedy.

[NewHampster]

3. I was wondering how long it would take.

You get the prize.

:boring:

[derby378]

5. I'm convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots...

...but I'm not convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald paid for the bullets.

George Herbert Walker Bush, when asked where he was when JFK was gunned down, said he couldn't remember where he was. Sound like bullshit to you? It does to me. I wasn't even born then, but everyone I've heard from about the Kennedy assassination knows where they were when they heard the news.

So although I'm convinced that there was only one gunman (thank you, Gerald Posner and Penn & Teller), I think there just might have been a conspiracy behind the shootings after all.

[Ikonoklast]

7. GHWBush was in Dallas

Overseeing the hit.

Bush41 was a liar then, and still is to this day.

[Initech]

12. Oswald may have fired the gun, but someone had to plan the whole thing.

And I'm convinced George 41 was the planner. The whole thing was as coreographed as the next Backstreet Boys video. There's no way Oswald could have thought of everything himself.

[Thothmes]

47. Why Not Johnson

He was the only one that directly benefited from JFK's Assination.

[Initech]

58. Yeah, but people forget that Bush had a motive.

Kennedy fucked up his plans with the Bay Of Pigs invasion, and publicly embarrassed the CIA for a long time, and this was his way of getting revenge, it wasn't about who benefited directly from the assassination, it was about revenge.

[Thothmes]

61. LBJ had reasons also

LBJ didnt have a motive. He hated the Kennedys. He became the President, a position he had lusted after. I think it is a stronger motive than a botched invasion of a 3rd world country.

[Parche]

55. One shooter?

If you look at the film closely you will see that his head moves BACK rapidly, after he holds
his neck from the front, that means a frontal shot, and also one of the Doctors has always said
the neck wound was an entrance wound.......that blows the Warren Commission out of the water
and I KNOW Bugliosi is full of crap when he says different...........:hi:

[hedgehog]

8. Generally, assassins are very proud and boast of their accomplishment.

Oswald said he didn't do it.

[derby378]

16. Many professional assassins, however, value anonymity

The Ninja clans of Renaissance-era Japan are a textbook example of the low-key assassin. They endured training from childhood much like Sparta's warriors, they observed their own code of honor and conduct, and they almost always passed their skills from father to son - the Ninja, as a rule, did not trust outsiders in their midst.

Oswald was a misfit and a screw-up, true, but he was still a Marine, and he knew how to use an old Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle to score two hits on JFK, one of them the infamous head shot caught on film by Abraham Zapruder.

[MinM]

62. Breach of Trust

You are correct shance. This seems to be a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate the Oswald Myth. Thanks to the release of CIA files due to the JFK Records Act of 1992 we are learning more about those who killed Kennedy. As opposed to what Robert Stone of "Oswald's Ghost" would like people to believe.

Response to Robert Stone re "Oswald's Ghost"

..people need to get MUCH MORE INVOLVED, must press for and demand the truth, and not just about the Kennedy assassination. Many of us understand that by not insisting on the truth about who killed Kennedy, the public made possible the lies that led us to war in Iraq. Where there is no accountability, criminal behavior will only increase. Had we pressed for the truth and held the perpetrators responsible, there's no way we'd be in Iraq at this time. History would have traversed a very different path..

More importantly there are researchers out there doing good work with the new information available. Jim DiEugenio recommends Gerald D. McKnight's "Breach of Trust"

[Faygo Kid]

4. I was in 7th grade, too.

Mrs. Burgoyne's 7th grade history class, and I remember every detail like it was yesterday. A student from the south with a heavy accent was in an animated discusssion at the end of the class before, and asked me to confirm (I thought) that McKinley had been shot. He was holding a transistor radio, but I did not think anything of it except he wasn't supposed to have it in school. His southern accent was so heavy that I did not realize until walking into Mrs. Burgoyne's class and seeing her crying that he had said Kennedy, not McKinley.

It was an awful experience, and the next week was incredible, but anyone our age can't forget it. I remember watching Ruby shoot Oswald live, too.

[chaumont58]

6. A few years back, I saw Joseph Califano(sp?) interviewed on CSPAN

Califano was in DC that November day as a member of the Kennedy Administraton. He was saying that someone well connected to the Adminstration thought that Castro was behind the Assassination. He said something like the Kennedy brothers tried many times to kill Castro, but in the end, Castro scored first.
I was 25 years old at the time. I remember that November 22, 1963, fairly well, and the Castro scenario makes sense to me.

[Javaman]

63. Read "Legacy of Ashes" by Weiner.

It goes into the same thing you are saying.

The book, itself, is on the history of the CIA. It was put out this year and it's based upon recently released (via the FOIA) documents from the CIA.

Very eye opening.

[stevietheman]

9. I've come to the conclusion that the Kennedy years are way too overblown...

as if he was the only thing going for America's positive future.

The reality is that a lot of great things have happened in this country since the 1960s... all sorts of innovations, lifestyle improvements, and expansions of rights, even as we continue to face challenges and stupidity from some quarters.

JFK was but one man, a very good man, but just a man. He did what he could in his time, and he made a huge difference. One could even say his death made the 1964 Civil Rights Act a reality.

I say let's not linger on this any more. America needs to lick its old wounds and get on with it.

Life goes on!

[murielm99]

15. See post #13. n/t

[blues90]

21. If you were there when it all happened and I get the sense you were not

Then you might see things a bit differently . It was not just JFK but soon after MLK and RFK . and since then no one has had the mind to see into a future or speak as well or project a future of hope .

Right after all of this horror the world changed forever and was set on a course of greed no one could have ever imagined before .

" get on with it , lick our wounds "? Get on with what , this crap called democracy and an economy and a space program bent on some defense contract like star wars . A country where torture is somehow accepted and bombing countries who posed no threat are ok , where schools and education are at the bottom of some long forgotten list and a constitution shreaded by madmen while they sleep and slime the very whitehouse that used to stand for something .

[NewHampster]

24. Wow. Blues90 puts my thoughts on paper

Thank you

[JDPriestly]

42. Read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine

Kennedy's assassination catapulted liberals into a state of shock. The country regressed. The whole hippy movement was in part a symptom of that regression. The deaths of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and others soon followed. We were all lost and confused. The War in Vietnam exploded in our faces. Johnson introduced a level of corruption by brining Brown & Root, the predecessor to Halliburton into the government contract game. Then there was the draft and Nixon -- the horror of Nixon. The assassination of Kennedy was extremely important because it disabled and paralyzed the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is only now recovering. Edwards' candidacy is the brightest ray of hope we have had since the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Carter was a wonderful man. Clinton was a good fellow. But, since Kennedy, Edwards is the first Democratic candidate for president who has the right mixture of idealism, realism and strength to actually inspire change.

[Thothmes]

48. You speak many true words.

[murielm99]

10. I was a sophomore in high school.

I was in typing class. A whole classroom full of typewriters makes a loud clacking noise, so no one heard the P.A. system's beep at first. Finally, a boy at the front of the class pointed to it.

We heard our principal announce that Kennedy had just been shot. He told us that as more news developed, he would put the radio on over the P.A. for the entire school to hear.

Some of went back to typing. Most of us did nothing, and the teacher did not care. The principal came back on the P.A. He told us that he would hold the bell, and to stay in our current classrooms until he dismissed us verbally.

We listened as Kennedy was rushed to the hospital. When it was announced that he had been shot in the head, the meanest boy in the whole school put his head down and cried.

After Kennedy was declared dead, our principal released us to our next class. The hallways were dead silent. The only sounds I heard were the sounds of lockers closing.

I went to my geometry class, where the teacher was slumped in his seat. He told us that the bad guys had won today. He didn't know yet who the bad guys were, but they had won. After about ten minutes, they sent us home. It was the most orderly departure from school that I had ever seen.

We had the following Monday off, too. I remember how packed my church was. I had never seen that many people in church, including Easter and Christmas Eve.

[NewHampster]

13. Most DUers don't know what a typwriter is

Kinda funny and they also think the Kennedy "years" were about Kennedy. Innocence was lost that day and two generations were forever changed.

[stevietheman]

59. Was innocence lost when Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley...

were assassinated also?

[Thothmes]

49. Oddy enough

I was a sophmore at the time, I was in typing class when we heard about the President being shot. This was on the west coast. Essentially the same think happened in our school. School shut down when the word came that he had died.

[DemoTex]

11. Read Norman Mailer's "Oswald's Tale."

Also read Don Delillo's novel Libra, a fictive account of Oswald and the JFK assassination that sent R/W columnist George Will into near apoplexy when the book came out. There was way too much truth about the JFK assassination in Delillo's fiction for the R/W to stomach.

And read all you can about Oswald's assassination attempt against Gen. Edwin Walker (US Army ret.) in April 1963 at Walker's home on Turtle Creek Blvd. in Dallas. It was, putatively, for the Walker hit that Oswald mail-ordered the Mannlicher carbine, and it is alleged that it was on the day of the Walker hit that Oswald posed - dressed in black - with that Mannlicher carbine. The dry version is in the Warren Commission Report. But there are spicy versions, some of which include speculations as to why Gen. Walker was drummed out of the US Army (closet homosexuality and proselytizing in his Army uniform - with his 4 stars - at KKK rallies in the south), and some cite Dallas police records of the arrest of an 83 year old Gen. Edwin Walker for soliciting sex from a male undercover officer in Reverchon Park on lower Turtle Creek in Dallas.

It has been a long time since I read Oswald's Tale. But I think this Thursday would be a fitting time to start reading it again: for JFK who died 44 years ago (11/22/1963 .. I was 15 then), and for Norman Mailer who died last week (11/10/2007).

Also remember the deaths of two great writers on November 22, 1963: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. Their deaths were more-or-less lost in the horror that came out of Dallas that day.

[Crabby Appleton]

14. My favorite president - JFK

I was in 8th grade then.

[Mike03]

17. That was the day I came home from the hospital after my mother

gave birth to me. November 22 1963. Today is my birthday.

She said she felt so alone, because of what had happened.

Everyone was mesmerized by the television, and what happened over the next three days.

My father was a reporter, in the old days when a telegraph type machine relayed the news, but in the case of a major story, it would ring once. On November 22, it rang once, and then twice, and then it just kept ringing with the news that JFK had been shot. And then later, the news broke that he was dead.

My mother once told me, "I'm sorry I brought you into this world the same week that our president was killed." She feels guilty for that, even though obviously there is nothing she could have done about this. The entire nation changed forever that day.

[NewHampster]

19. Not the best day to be born

But much better than the alternative.

[Mike03]

23. Right

But thanks for making this post. It brings back a lot of memories and things I never talked about to anyone.

What a disaster that day was to everything that came after November 1983.

[shance]

38. I think the biggest disaster is the lies we've been fed and

how the subsequent tolerance and acceptance of such lies led to the murders of our other best and brightest upcoming leaders like Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy......and Paul Wellstone.

[liberal renegade]

18. Had JFK not been assassinated

there would not have been a republican elected president, to this day.

[Mike03]

20. Amazed no one has rec'd this thread

Regardless of who killed JFK, our entire perception changed that day, forever, ubiquitously, and without exception.

November 22, 1963 was definitely the day that the United States lost its innocence.

[NewHampster]

22. anyone who wonders why Our generation is our generation

just needs to look at this one event. Everything to follow can be traced to this day.

Johnson's Vietnam Escalation
Our distrust of said escalation
etc.

[Mike03]

25. My parents would definitely agree with you.

Everything I know about that time has been learned from books and movies. And that goes for Viet Nam as well--I was just to young to remember it. But that entire period feels like one of those historical eras that is irrevocable; after that moment, nothing else would ever be the same.

[NewHampster]

27. Like Sept. 11 to the current generation

Nothing will ever be the same again.

[electron_blue]

31. Yeah... I was born in 63 and Kennedy's assass'n was always followed the year of my

birth much like it will always follow my daughter who was born right after 9/11. Nothing too profound, but it connects a person to a major event if they were born about when it occurred, esp if it was something likely to have strongly affected one's parents.

[NewHampster]

32. My daughter witnessed 9-11 from Washington Square

and as a college freshman that year she knew it was a major event in her life but I doubt she understands how profoundly it will affect her.

Hers was the September 11 Graduating class and the speeches and praise were all about how the kids and staff reacted and behaved throughout the days and months following 9-11.

It is part of her life and part of her generation's makeup.

[NewHampster]

29. Happy birthday Mike

:party: :toast: :party:

[NewHampster]

26. I remember standing for hours to view Bobby at St. P

Years had past since November 22, 1963 but we were still so in shock that Bobby's death was not a new wound, but just a further twisting of the knife in our guts.

[undeterred]

28. My 2nd grade teacher said, "children, today is history" and she cried

Most of us had heard about it during the lunch hour but we were too young to know how to react. But when we went back into classes at 1pm they did not dismiss us. Our 23 year old teacher brought in a radio and we sat in silence listening to the news as they kept announcing "President Kennedy has been assassinated. The President is unofficially dead." Our teacher sat at the front of the class and wept as quietly as she could. I remember thinking that I wanted to console her but knowing that there was absolutely no way.

My brother was two months old and we still had him in a crib in the living room. My parents did not cry but I had never seen them so somber. So, yes even though I had just turned 7 I really do remember it. I was to young too understand or know what it meant, but the wall of adult emotion around me was enormous and as a child you can feel when that is being torn.

[frogmarch]

30. I was sick with a cold

the day Oswald shot JFK, so instead of being in school, I was home watching TV. "The Edge of Night" was interrupted with the terrible news. My mom was in the kitchen making me hot lemonade (ewww!). I yelled, "Mom! President Kennedy's been shot!" and she came running. She was a Republican who'd voted for Nixon, but she had come to admire and support JFK, and she wept in her hands at the news of the shooting.

I can still recall the particular scene that was on that soap when the program was interrupted. I was also watching TV when Ruby shot Oswald. I saw it live.

[ProfessorGAC]

50. Wow! Plate Of Shrimp!

That's nearly the exact same story i have. I was home sick, and my mom was watching As The World Turns. She was on the phone with a friend of her's when the Special Bulletin came through. She sort of heard it, asked me what they just said, and i told her. She hung up the phone and came running.
GAC

[Raine]

33. Sad day, horrible day

I was also in 7th grade too. The principal came in with the most horrible look on his face and told the class then he went out and lowered the flag. :patriot: :cry:

[NewHampster]

34. I wonder if middle school would have changed things

I mean, I had just finished being the big 6th grader in grade school. Now I was a puny 7th grader getting ready for our first dances with real girls.

7th grade then was not the 7th grade of today.

[Oldtimeralso]

35. 44 years ago

The hope died for many but for me it was an eye-opening experience that touched my heart. This is the reason that I became involved in politics and the reason for my democratic beliefs. In 1960 I was impressed when a small group of people (4 or 5) got of an old DC 3 at the far side of Chicago's Midway Airport and one of the people walked over to the airport fire station and shook hands with the firemen and a 12 year old kid that was an airplane buff (me). He introduced himself a John Kennedy and he was running to be the Democratic candidate for president.

[upi402]

36. PBS carried water for the BULLSHIT notion that when JFK's head went back

it was not logical that he was shot from the front.

Assholes. I stopped donating that day, and to this day.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. I had just come back from overseas and was on leave.

I'd been thrilled when JFK was elected, but my respect for him had begun to crumble after the missile crisis and when my squadron was alerted to go to Laos.

But, I was stunned when I turned on the TV that morning and heard watched the news and I mourned with the rest of the nation.

My "hope" died with Kent State and My Lai.

[kineneb]

39. I was 5

and don't remember the actual day. But I do remember the broadcasts and photos of the funeral. His two children, so near my age, looked so alone and lost. My grandparents, with whom I lived, were quite sad and upset. There did seem to be a sense of optimism, which died with him.

I am too young to remember a "time before." JFK, RFK, MLKjr, Johnson, Vietnam and Nixon are features of the landscape of my childhood. (Jeez, maybe that is why I have so many problems.)

[Greylyn58]

40. I was 5 years old at the time, four months shy of turning 6

I remember sitting on the floor of the apartment we lived in at the time( my Dad was in the Marines-stationed at Quantico, VA). Mom was doing the ironing as she watched her favorite soap--"As the World Turns". Suddenly CBS News broke onto the screen and reported that the President has been shot. Mom was just stunned. Several minutes later, came the famous clip that I'm sure others have seen of Walter Cronkite. He came on the screen and with so much emotion in his voice announced that the President was dead by an assassins bullet in Dallas, TX.

I vividly remember my Mom breaking down and crying. Being as young as I was I sorta knew something bad had happened and I remember asking her what was wrong. She tried to explain to me as best as she could, what had happened.

I remember watching the funeral with my folks later. It was so sad. We lost so much that day.

:(

[Vinca]

43. I still hear the drums. I'll never forget the drums. nt

[Perry Logan]

44. One of our darkest moments. But surely JFK wouldn't want us to feel that "hope died" when he died.

[dailykoff]

60. We've still got Teddy

and RFK Jr, also Carolyn, Joe, Patrick and Kathleen, and lots of other good Dems, and that's plenty of reason to be hopeful.

[SoCalDem]

45. He served less than a thousand days.. a lifetime ago..and yet

People who never met him, and only learned of him by seeing a picture in Grandma's house, or in a book at school, and people all over the world knew what he stood for, and admired him then, and still do.

He was young, by the standards of the day, and yes he may have been a "player", but he never embarrassed his country. He served 4 years in wartime, and acquitted himself admirably.

He was rich and could have partied his way through life, but he did not. The life he might have lost in wartime, he still lost in service to his country.

He met with "bad people".. He stared down our enemies, and they blinked. He erred with The Bay of Pigs fiasco, and like a man, he admitted it. He had courage and grace.

He was not petulant and secretive. No doubt he kept secrets, but he was not one to embarrass or belittle people .

He focused our hopes and aspirations, and looked to the future with fearless ambition...ambition to help the world and foster Peace..not to dominate and change regimes. Millions of young people were inspired to put their lives on hold and venture to the four corners of the world in the Peace Corps. He "invented" the space program and within the 10 year goal he set, we had men on the moon..sent with computers with less power than your Blackberry.

The world liked us then. We were the hope of the world. Foreign dignitaries came to the US and were treated with respect and decorum..not hotdogs on the grill at Mom & Dad's house.

Every president since him, has served longer, and yet his legacy is the strongest.

The sad thing is that when he died, hope died with him. His brother tried to regain it for us, but was also killed for the effort.

It's almost as if we are afraid to care too much again for a candidate..any candidate, lest we get our hearts broken again.

People of my age remember when hope was limitless.. we could do anything... and then we couldn't.


We've had presidents who were in office longer, but none of them have retained the interest or admiration of JFK. You can go to any country on earth and say JFK, and they will nod..even if they do not speak english.

Presidents after him have come and gone, and most of the time, it's with a kick in the pants and a "Good Riddance". People can name every building in DC after Reagan, and JFK's administration will still shine brighter than any of those "Thousand points of Light" that Reagan/Bush loved to talk about.. Maybe those Thousand points of light were the days we had Kennedy..and the lights have long ago gone out.

Maybe someday we will get another president who can inspire us.. I had one in my lifetime, and I wish the same for my children. It could be that we just have not yet been introduced to that president.

[NewHampster]

51. kick

[blues90]

53. Most of the time I have to really wonder if there is such a person

Someone like JFK or RFK . Things have changed into a world unfamilar to me and tradition has all but died .

Most of us who were around when JFK was president see how we got to where we are now but to answer why we got here is the problem .

Perhaps it does not matter , perhaps it does , it does to me but this does not help .

People can talk progress or people can talk paths to progress or direction .

Since JFK was murdered we were distracted but still had focus , now we are bombarded with distraction and divided where it seems real answers are buried within .

I am not afraid of being let down as much as I am afraid people like JFK no longer exist .

[KoKo]

54. Hope did die that day....but we don't know...had he lived ...how it

would have played out. Second hope died when MLK was shot and RFK was killed on his way to the Presidency. Since then we've been a corrupted Dem Party always on the heels of the Repugs...with weak candidates always being co-opted.

Nixon's Resignation was a high point...in redeeming ourselves...but it didn't take long for his Impeachment Crimes to be covered over and for us to get back into the groove of Dem Infighting and weak candidates.

If only our Democratic Party would shout it's Idealism....but then...it can't because it's been corrupted by the MONEY and INFLUENCE...and has done NO Grassroots like the Repugs.

People say our Dem Day is Coming in '08 and we should keep Everything Off the Table until we Win Big in '08. Why do I feel that's more empty promises. Bill Clinton was to be our savior! A two term President Dem who held his popularity throughout what was thrown at him. BUT "We the People" suffered under the Clinton Regime. Dems spent so much time Defending him against the Repugs that we didn't see how misguided his Administration was for real Dem Platform. Bill put his finger in the dyke and held back the worst of the Repug Dreams of War and Economic Privitization but stuff was boiling "under the surface" that the Repugs took advantage of and Bill gave the Repugs "NAFTA, MEDIA DEREGULATION, SEC Re-Reg (which ditched FDR's protections on Wall St. after the Great Depression) and "Welfare Reform" which through thousands more into poverty ...while we were subjected to the most Intimate Sexual Details of what went on in an Office Off the West Wing...with cigars and stuff.

We've been throught he wringer...we Dems. Haven't we HAD ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP with MANIPULATION?

WHEN WILL WE REALIZE...WHAT WE ARE ABOUT? :shrug:

[dailykoff]

56. Jack and Bobby are dead, yes,

Jackie too, but I don't think hope has died. They showed us what we can be and even if we never get that close to Camelot again for another thousand years we'll still have hope.



Thanks for eloquently reminding us and thanks SoCalDem for this great pic! :thumbsup:

[onethatcares]

57. I was in the fourth grade/catholic school

my emotional response was to laugh, I couldn't cry. I caught big time hell for that. Why do they always assasssinate the liberal hope?