Novembers in Georgia always can be
characterized with the color gray. Of course, there are sometimes
bright colorful sunny days, more like October, and then there can be
frigid days more representative of January, but mostly Georgia, November days
are full of gray.
In the fall of 1963, one of my two, distinct
memories of fourth grade was suffering from a type of childhood
anxiety, perhaps brought on by my mother's returning to work – a type
of separation fear. Scared of all kinds of things that I thought could happen without my mother's being there, I'd wake up on school morning with a “tummy ache” and tell
my parents that I did not want to go to school.
The blogger and her sister in Falls Church, Virginia, summer 1963
My parents did not let us stay out of
school with such a flimsy and un-diagnosed malaise, but they were concerned about the
frequency of my complaints and took turns, if they could, of helping by walking me
to school on those days. Other times since they both worked, they
elicited the help of close neighbor Pat Gable, whose daughter Marcie
was my best friend, to help me get over those hurdles as once I got
to school, they both knew I seem to adjust and be fine.
One morning, I dressed, sick at my stomach, but delayed by my illness, and left late to go to school. I pretended that I had gone, but instead, hid in a neighbor's yard, let some time pass, and returned to Pat's house and told her that
“I had been sent home.” Pat kept me at her house until my parents got home from work. Since it was discovered somehow that I hadn't shown up at school at all, had told a bold face lie, of
course, I was punished accordingly, but they were concerned about this new development in my well-being.
At one point, they considered enrolling
me in the school district where Daddy was employed, and perhaps this
pushed me to work through that anxiety. I just know I suffered a lot
the first months of the fall of 1963, but somehow managed to overcome
that anxiety and that problem did not return for the rest of my elementary school years.
My fourth grade teacher was Mrs.Gibson, a middle-aged dark haired woman who had taught fourth
grade at Perkerson Elementary for decades. Kind but formidable, she
challenged her students to memorize passages of historical documents,
poems, and state capitals, do long division, study the battles of the Civil War, diagram sentences, and read. We
respectfully loved her and tried not to draw attention to ourselves
with any type of overt misbehavior. We stealthily passed notes, drew
boy's names on our palms with ink, and whispered only when we were
sure of no discovery.
Early in the afternoon of November,
22, 1963, we sat in Mrs. Gibson's class waiting for the school day to be over. It
was Friday, Thanksgiving holidays were just around the corner, and we
were itching for the weekend. We stared at the minute hand on the big
black and white clock on the wall and listened as it loudly ticked off the seconds. As we tapped our pencils, fidgeted in our wooden, shellacked top school desks, and
pretended to complete whatever assignment Mrs. Gibson had given, the
door opened and Van Wing, a seventh grader and audio visual aide in
the library, swung opened the classroom door and blurted out,
“President Kennedy has been shot.” I don't know if he was
supposed to deliver something to our classroom, how he knew this information, or what,
but he announced it with confidence to our fourth grade classroom as if he had been sent on this errand. Perhaps, he had -- as this was way before televisions were in school rooms -- all we had were film projectors, record players, and the occasional radio.
Immediately the classroom buzzed, my
friend Jackie, oblivious to the rules of democracy, leaned over and whispered to me, “If he dies, will
Richard Nixon be president now?”, and a shocked Mrs. Gibson shooed
Van back to his job and restored the class to order as best she
could.
Van,who lived directly behind us on Bader
Avenue, had a reputation for being wild, but even Mrs. Gibson knew
that Van wouldn't be bold enough to make that kind of announcement without it being based on good information.
The rest of that school day, the little time that was left, is a blur to me. It
was 2:00 Atlanta time when President Kennedy died in Dallas ---
we had probably only forty-five more minutes of academics.
The Atlanta
Journal and
Constitution papers wishing to get out the latest news
delayed its evening printing. My brothers both had paper routes, and
since they had to wait for the late delivery, arrived home way after
dark, exhausted, but having sold out of all their extra papers, a highly unusual occurrence.
The weight of what had happened began
to settle in our home. Normally a boisterous bunch, egging each other
on, fighting, and getting on each other's nerves, each of us tried to process the news –
I can only imagine the difference in how we reacted – my oldest brother
Hunter a ninth grader, Margaret a seventh grader, and Kenneth a fifth
grader – we were in such different places of maturity.
My parents, who were strict about
television viewing, allowed the small set in our den to run
constantly with the coverage. We stayed up late, all huddled about
the screen like it gave off heat, and watched President Kennedy's
body returned to Washington by plane and noted the grisly image of
the dark stains on Jackie Kennedy's suit – even in black and white
it frightened me.
Greatly affected by it all, I worried
that assassins ran free and one waited in the bushes outside my house
to kill me or someone I loved. I lay awake that night playing the
day's events over and over in my memory – something I would do for
months to come.
On Saturday morning, I played with my
friends outside --- an overcast but not cold, gray day --- we rode
our bikes, played games, and occasionally referenced the American
tragedy; in our childhood minds, we tried to figure out what it could mean for our lives -- our president being shot and killed.
On Sunday,
while we attended church, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. We heard
the news on the radio on our ride home, and my parents turned to the
television news coverage. That grainy black and white tumultuous and
chaotic filmed scene played over and over until it was pretty much
etched in my mind. That night I worried about who would be killed
next. It was a scary time.
My childhood world had been shattered,
and my parents knowing that the event had historical significance,
called me in from outside to watch any coverage of the events leading
up to his funeral. The scenes of the long lines outside the capitol
as his body lay in state, the cortege and the flag draped wagon
taking his body to the cathedral for the funeral, and then it again
as it carried his body to Arlington Cemetery to be interred – that
rider-less horse leading the way.
When the magazines of
Life, Look, and Newsweek arrived in the mail in the days
afterward, the color pictures of Jackie Kennedy's blood spattered
pink suit made me queasy, but with my morbid curiosity aroused, I stared
at frozen image after frozen image of those tragic days.
Those were sad, gray days of November,
and the pall of what happened weighed on the upcoming holidays for
that year including Christmas.
Kenneth, Margaret, the blogger, and Hunter, Lynchburg, Virginia, Christmas 1963
For me, the year 1963 will always
dredge up that time of upheaval in my childhood when I felt like something
firm, something perfect, something safe had slipped away.
Thankful when the
calendar date changed to 1964, I quit scribbling the month, numbered day, and 1963, at the top of my school papers, and I knew we would forge ahead
--- somehow leaving those troublesome days and memories behind us. But, we did and we didn't.
