November 22, 1963. I was in my high school freshman English
class when the principal’s voice came over the intercom – sounding weaker than his
usual bellow, yet ever more serious. When he got to the part about President Kennedy
having been shot in Dallas, my teacher (a very pretty, very self-assured young
woman rumored to be dating a NY Giants football player) literally fell into the
chair behind the teacher’s desk. She didn’t look so pretty or seem as socially
legendary anymore. She slumped and quietly cried. She could not speak. The principal
had said enough, ending with instructions for an early dismissal
– which got me home within minutes of Walter Cronkite’s iconic controlled yet emotional
delivery of the official news that the President was dead. This was the first
time I experienced the world around me shutting down and remaining hauntingly
still – a stillness and shock that would last hours through the news of Officer
Tippit’s death and the return of the Johnsons and Kennedys to D.C. - and continue through the days we watched Ruby shoot Oswald –
in real time -- on a boxy black-and-white TV in my living room, and then the
funeral.
November 22, 1963. That is the Friday in November I have
always associated with the seasonal tag – Black Friday – never the shopping day
after Thanksgiving. This Black Friday actually precipitated the closing of most
stores – through the mournful weekend and funeral – all of which draped their
window displays in black fabric, festooning the official photograph of the President, smiling broadly, contrasted only by the red, white, and blue of an American flag.
Having the entire world stop
and then remain still for some time was different than the way
family and dear friends drop out of the otherwise unaffected flow of the universe for a
few days, grieving the loss of a close relative or friend. Through the fifty years since then I can count
on one hand the other times I’ve felt that extended collective pause: September
11, 2003, January 26,1986 and December 14, 2012. Three too many.
