2000-11-22 - 10:36 MST

November 22, 2000

O'er The World A Pall

Bev Sykes and Jim Lawrence this morning wrote of their memories of the same date in 1963. President Kennedy's assassination.

In 1963 I was 42 years old, naively believing that we had a great President and that all was well. A safe and secure feeling surrounded me and it looked to me as if we had a man in the White House who was doing the needed things to benefit our country. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." "Ich bin ein Berliner."(was the Berliner his ?) Both quotes may not be exact word for word -- the full meaning is there I think.

I was working for an upstart - start up, pickup truck camper company standing up on a stepladder doing some task on the top edge (I remember not what) when our boss came out from the office and told us that President Kennedy had been shot, and with tears running down his cheeks he told us to go home for a few days.

How could such a terrible thing have happened to someone who was trying to help us all.

The grave robbers are still sifting through the ruins and are trying to rattle the bones in his closet, but they will never stir my love and respect for him. Sure, he had warts, as do most of the great and famous far back in history. I got warts, you got warts, all God's chillun got warts. Look in the mirror dammit.

Everyone I knew was in front of their TV until President Kennedy was buried. And later returned shaken and grieved to our various jobs. Some how the world was darker, clouded with tears ready to fall it seemed to me. Pure joy and pleasure were put on hold for awhile while we drug ourselves through the mud of melancholy dreariness smeared with the muck of Ruby's (witnessed by us on TV) killing of Oswald.

Yet today I REMEMBER J.F.K. Until this moment, I kept from saying much of any thing of it, but 37 years later I can mourn him and remember him as a great man -- lost to us too early in life.

And still there is O'er The World A Pall . . . . . . . .

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