Thinking of JFK

Excuse me for stepping away from sports, but on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination in Dallas, yours truly is going to chip in with his own two cents worth. Hell, everybody else has, including a lot of folks that weren't even born yet when it happened.

The old saying goes, "Everybody remembers where they were and what they were doing when they got word of that tragic event". Yours truly is no exception, I was sitting in 7th grade Engish class when the principal announced over the PA (public address) system (that was piped into every classroom and hallway) that the President had been killed. Do schools even have PA systems anymore? Beats me, but even if so, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't announce such a thing these days to the kids. First they'd call in an army of counselors, which we never seemed to need back then. We had one for the whole school. An old lady who sat in a room, and nobody wanted to go see her. Whatever happened, sometimes very bad things -- like a fellow student getting killed in a car wreck -- we handled it. We didn't need to be analyzed, probed and prodded, which seems to have become the recent norm. No wonder so many kids wind up being dysfunctional these days. If the system left them alone to their own devices, they'd be just fine. Children are amazingly resilient until adults start messing with their heads.

As a 12 year old, I didn't know what to make of it, though I seem to remember my teacher started crying. My mom, like most other moms back then, couldn't wait to rush to school and fetch me back home under her protective wings, though to this day I still don't understand the reasoning behind that. I mean, c'mon. Shots rang out in Dallas, but I was in Pontiac, Michigan, thousands of miles away. It's not like our student body was in danger from any further gunfire down there. But that's just sort of the way it was back then. We kids were just fine, but all the adults panicked. Of course, this was also back in the days when we'd have routine "nuclear war" drills. Everybody out into the hallway, sit down and lean up against the wall, draw both legs up next to your chest with both arms, and tuck your head deeply between your knees. In hindsight, other than to kiss your butt goodbye if the nukes really did start falling, it's laughable to look back at some of the procedures we followed back then, thinking they somehow made us safer.

Kennedy himself had his ups and downs to be sure. The positive was always accentuated. He was a war hero that swam for miles while rescuing a crew mate after his PT boat was sunk. Truth is, his much faster and more mobile PT boat was rammed and cut in half by a Japanese destroyer in the first place. How could he have allowed that to happen? But nobody wanted to talk about that.

JFK was rightfully credited for staring down the Soviets during the whole "12 days of October" thing when they had put nuclear missiles on Cuba, within easy and quick striking range of the US. Yet just a year and a half earlier, he had totally botched the "Bay of Pigs" invasion, which resulted in Cuban "nationalists" trying to overthrow Fidel Castro being slaughtered. US citizens have been treated to many documentaries about one of these incidents, but scant few regarding the other.

Back in those days, the news media wasn't what it is now. Out of some sort of misguided respect, they ignored a lot of things they likely knew about, and didn't divulge them to the public. Certainly, there is credible evidence that JFK, and even his brother RFK, weren't exactly totally faithful to their marriages during the time of "Camelot". The name Marilyn Monroe comes to mind. But this sort of dirt was ignored back then, supposedly for the good of the country. In recent times, though many still try, high-profile figures, let alone a President, can't get away with any such hanky-panky. The media would swarm all over them, and couldn't wait to blast it out to the public.

It's been said JFK never would have allowed the ill-fated Viet Nam war debacle to happen. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll never know. Could it be that had he lived, the cultural revolution that yours truly grew up in during the 60's would never have happened either? You know, guys with long hair, sexual promiscuity, drugs everywhere, Woodstock, the race riots, and all that? Would we still be back in Happy Days, with a modern day version of Wally and the Beave drawing families together to watch them on TV? Somehow, I doubt that. For that matter, I'm still trying to figure out what Ozzie Nelson did for a living. But hey, as long as Harriett and the boys were happy -- who cared? Another round of milkshakes, please.

And how about the assassination itself 50 years ago? We all know about Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and the Warren commission's ultimate findings. Oswald acted alone. Yet over the years, many other questions have been raised and theories put forth that have been worth considering. A second shooter, the grassy knoll, the magic bullet that went left-right-left in mid-air, etc. None of this has been proven, of course, and never will be. Thing is, back then, the Warren commission had to come up with a definitive answer, because the public demanded it. Their President had just been killed, fer chrissakes, and they wanted this case solved. And so they did, whether one chooses to believe the validity of their findings -- or not.

I'm a long way from that 7th grade English class now, but some things still make me wonder about that fateful day in Dallas.

Much of the official "evidence" was quickly sealed for 75 years. In other words, if one was old enough to be even dimly aware of what transpired on 11/22/63, much like myself, chances are 75 years later, we would all be dead. Other than historians, and those that would pursue them for their own selfish interests, not too many people get worked up about things that happened that they weren't alive themselves to experience. Presidents Garfield and McKinley got shot and killed too, but you don't hear a whole lot of folks still talking about those incidents.

Yet there's one thing that really jumps out at me about the whole sordid JFK affair. The former President's brain seems to be missing. Officially, nobody knows what ever became of it in the aftermath of what happened a half century ago. Given the magnitude of the situation back then, one would think every last piece of evidence would have been thoroughly examined, and meticulously filed away for future reference, if need be. Yes, JFK was quickly put to rest with all the honors deserving of a President. But he was also autopsied. So what happened to his brain?

The well-known Zapruder film has spawned much debate over the decades, as to whether the gruesome "kill shot" came from the front or the back. But let's get real. This age-old mystery would be solved quickly to a 100% certainty -- if JFK's brain was available to be examined. Any modern day forensic pathology team would easily determine which way that bullet travelled through it.

But perhaps some things are better left unsolved, at least in the government's eyes. If it turned out there was indeed a second shooter from likely the grassy knoll, then what? The Warren commission would be exposed as a farce, and good luck trying to identify a culprit, who would quite likely be dead as well by this time, whose very existence has officially been denied for a half century. That could get complicated -- on a whole lot of fronts.

The following morning, like any other day back then, yours truly was out and about doing his early morning Detroit Free Press paperboy route, before I went to school. Load the pile of papers at the drop-off point into my paper bags, then start walking down the sidewalks folding them up and throwing them on porches. But I'll never forget how HUGE the headline was. I was reading the story a bit at a time as one paper after another came out of my bags. I wish I had saved one of those papers, but I didn't think about such things back then. But I also remember it was quite cold that morning.

So yes, many of us have distinct memories as to where we were and what we were doing on 11/22/63. Even the morning after.

Nevertheless, here's to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 50 years later. While he certainly had his faults and made many powerful enemies along the way, he was also very much an inspirational leader. The United States hasn't seen a figure quite like him since, and most likely never will again.

God rest his soul.