Much has been said in the news this past week about the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As an individual old enough to remember this historical event, this extensive news coverage triggers a strong and vivid memory of that painful day.
As an eight-year-old, I spent that day in my third grade elementary class. My fellow classmates and I had gone out to lunch. The school yard rang with the happy outbursts of girls playing hopscotch and boys playing dodge ball. We girls were all dressed in our little 60’s dresses with fitted bodices, puffed sleeves, defined waists, flared skirts, and peter pan collars. In those days, girls never wore pants to school. Most of us swept our hair up into pony tails; the boys sported buzz cuts. In the innocence of the hour, we enjoyed our play. Then the bell rang signalling our free time was over, and we reluctantly returned to our academic labors.
Once inside the classroom, however, a sight I had never seen before confronted us. My teacher was weeping, and this frightened me, because I had never seen a teacher cry before. We children counted on adults to be always strong and brave, to guide us and protect us in every circumstance. Through her tears, my teacher told us the president had been shot, and that he had died as a result of his injuries. Then she instructed us to go to the window, as the flag was to be lowered to half-mast, and she wanted us to witness this. Perhaps her true motivation was to momentarily direct our eyes and attention away from her grief-ravaged face. As she intended, I have never forgotten the slow and deliberate descent of our country’s fabric emblem, the lowering of which symbolized the depth of despair at our nation’s loss.
In the thirty-three years that I have been an educator, several catastrophic historical events have occurred during school hours—the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, September 11th. Then it has been my duty to shepherd my students safely through a tumultuous day in our nation’s history. I cannot in all honesty say that I did this with better control of my grief than my third grade teacher did, but I did my best. When the signalling bell of history rings, that’s all any of us can ever do.
