Kathleen Parker November 22, 2013

By now, most of the world has digested the 50th anniversary of JohnF. Kennedy’s assassination, and millennials can sigh relief that another such re-examination is at least 10 years away.

While most recent books and films have covered Kennedy’s life andthe mysteries that remain, an equally compelling exploration is whypeople who were alive and cognizant at the time are still obsessed withevents surrounding the 35th president. What is it that makes hispresidency and death so profound for millions? Neither the truth nor the myth of the man seems to matter as much as the deeply personalexperience of hearing the words:

“President Kennedy is dead.”

“A death in the family” is how many have described that day, and this isas accurate as any explanation, especially for people who were childrenthen. The president and Mrs. Kennedy were more than the nation’s firstfamily; they were our parents, too. We identified with the children andlooked up to the grown-ups. In my own home, President Kennedy seemed tobe about the age of my father, “a Kennedy Democrat,” though thepresident was actually seven years older. I thought my mother every bitas beautiful and refined as Mrs. Kennedy.

Thus, when Kennedydied, we lost our symbolic father and our grief was for ourselves aswell as the Kennedys. We observed and absorbed Jacqueline Kennedy’sgrace and dignity; we felt her children’s loss as our own. Not only hadwe lost the leader of our nation but also our idealized notion of theAmerican family was shattered. At the time, no one knew of JFK’sdalliances, but even if they had, men in those days were allowedlatitudes that today would land them in rehab and an eternal limbo ofcontrition.

As is required by such remembrances, I was inseventh-grade P.E. when an announcement came over the P.A. system. Idon’t remember the precise words, but a sudden silence fell over thelocker room. I do remember that, for a guilty moment, I felt enormousrelief that, for whatever reason, I was being spared the daily horror of the group shower.

Shortly thereafter, my older brother and a friend, our junior high’s honor guard, lowered the flag to half-staff.

Home later that Friday afternoon, the full impact of events settled in. Myfather, who had navigated us through bomb-shelter drills during theCuban missile crisis, was silent and somber. Two days later, as we allgathered in front of the TV that had been on nonstop, we witnessed theutterly shocking moment when Jack Ruby sprang forward from a crowd andshot Lee Harvey Oswald in the gut. Oswald and the president were buried the same day, though members of the press had to serve as Oswald’s pallbearers since no one except his family showed up.

To children of the era, who were accustomed to seeing people “shot” in plenty of TV shows — always for the good when “Bonanza’s” Cartwrights were forced to draw — this was instantly recognizable assomething terribly different. Not only had someone killed our belovedfather-president but also we had just watched someone shot in real timewith a real gun resulting in a real death. To today’s Internetgeneration, many of whom may have witnessed beheadings, hangings andworse on YouTube or in real time, this may seem pallid stuff. But topeople of relative innocence, these two events were numbing andhorrifying.

Individually, we would never be the same.

After the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968)and Bobby Kennedy (June 6, 1968), we became a different people —frightened and anesthetized against hope. Adding to my personal sense of doom, my 18-year-old brother had left in January 1968 for Vietnam and a tour of Khe Sanh with the Marine Corps.

These were fractioustimes, to be sure, but more than that, they were deeply sad times, evenmore so in retrospect. Our murdered leaders, our 58,000 dead brothers, sons, husbands, fathers and uncles. It seemed we had come to mark time by the dead.

It should be little wonder, then, that we can’t shed these memories. Theyare in our bones. The eternal flame that burns at Kennedy’s grave inArlington National Cemetery is a tribute not only to a man but also to a lost time when life held promise. To Americans of a certain age, therereally was once a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot.

It is hard to let go.

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