Starting the school year right after seeing Dr. King give that speech inspired all of us. I think it confirmed for us that we could really change the world if we wanted to and sort of validated our choices. This was the last year of undergrad for Joanie and me both and the second for Noah in law school. Being a senior at that time was great. I got to start working toward what I really wanted to do and what I mean by that is that I got to work at it. I spent time in some schools and community centers and places like that trying to help out some of the kids. I know that wasn't going to be my only job and I did some work helping families and there was a lot of helping women who were on their own. Some of them had kids and some didn't.

I learned a lot between classes and the work I was doing. There's as many sides to a story as there are players in it. I tell you this tale but if you asked Buck or Ike or Emma or even Joanie to tell it and you'd get a different sort of story. Most events would be the same but what they meant to each person or even what caused things would be different in another person's eyes.

I really loved what I was doing though. I mean there was lots of days that I said something else because when you do what I did, you can't help everyone. Some people can't be saved and some things can't be fixed. I'm sure you get that everywhere though. I mean people go into medicine to help people and make them better but not everyone can get better and some people die and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. But I at least most days felt like I was putting in the good fight.

My schedule got a little more fuzzy around then. I ended up coming into the garage at night to take care of things that I couldn't get done while I was in school. If I had worked for anyone else but Al Hunter, I probably wouldn't have had a job but he understood and actually started looking for someone to maybe take my place after I graduated. He didn't figure I'd want to keep fixing cars and he was kind of right. Though I will say I did my own maintenance on every car I owned until they hit the point where you needed a degree in Computer Science to understand what was under the hood.

Long about November and I had settled into a nice routine. I knew where I was going to be on which days and at which time. Well along came this Friday later in the month and my appointments I usually worked on Fridays had been cancelled and I was caught up at the garage so I was home trying to catch up on some schoolwork. Joanie never had classes on Fridays that semester so she was there. Now it's funny to me to think about this part because you wouldn't ever talk to Joanie and peg her for a soap opera fan but she was. It was something she and her mom kept track of whatever they could. That's not as hard as you'd think because those storylines on those shows don't hardly move at all. You can miss a week or two and come back and it's like you saw it just the day before. So when she didn't have class during the day like that she had the soaps on. Well, I didn't care at all about those shows so I was in the bedroom with the radio on reading and I think trying to get a paper written. Joanie was doing some dishes while she listened to more than watched "As the World Turns". It was a little past one-thirty I guess and I heard a crash and a thud from the general direction of the kitchen. I rushed out to see if Joanie was alright and found her sitting in a pile of broken glass in the middle of the kitchen. Her eyes were wide and there were tears trying to form but she was too shocked to get them fully moving. Her hand was up to her mouth and the way she was frozen might have been comical if not for the mixed up look in her eyes.

"Are you okay, Joanie?" I asked and it was kind of a dumb question because she obviously wasn't. Me talking was enough to break her out of her shock though and she just shook her head and cried pointing at the TV in the next room. I somehow got to her without cutting my feet on all the glass. She had apparently been drying a big glass bowl and dropped it. We got into the living room so I could look her over and make sure she wasn't hurt when the announcement broke into the soap opera again. There was no visual right then and we all found out later that there wasn't a camera available for Walter Cronkite to use so we were making do with just his audio announcements for a while.

"Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously: President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, she called "Oh, no!" the motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News, President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details."

I suppose in the timeline of every country there are days that hit you below the belt. Those are the ones where everyone knows where they were when they heard. I can imagine that a hundred years earlier people talked about where they were and what they were doing when they heard about Lincoln and I know I heard plenty of folks a little older than me that would never forget hearing about Pearl Harbor. The first of that kind of moment I ever knew was November 22, 1963. We watched this man on TV. We saw him in Life Magazine playing with his little boy. It just never occurred to you that he could be shot. We kept watching, just staring blankly at the set without moving for near to an hour until Cronkite put his glasses on to read the Associated Press news flash.

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED AT 1 P.M. Central Standard Time, 2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago."

He took his glasses off and you could tell that even though he was probably the most professional of newscasters that there ever was that he was having a hard time keeping it together. I've seen news guys report all sorts of things and the only time I've seen seasoned journalists show that much emotion was when President John Kennedy was pronounced dead and then in September of 2001. That was another of those below the belt moments.

Joanie screamed and I was in so much shock I didn't even hardly register her scream. I just pulled her to me and let her wail in my ear. I couldn't even cry. Nothing made sense anymore. This was a young man with a young beautiful wife and two little kids. He was the only president I recall being young enough for teenaged girls to put pictures of on their walls. He made all of us kids who had felt like we couldn't do anything until we was too old for it to matter feel suddenly like we didn't have to wait for age spots and bifocals to be taken seriously. He told us that we all belonged and that everyone was supposed to have a shot at the American dream. He was the champion of every black man and every woman and everyone else who ever felt hopeless. He was proof that it was possible to be something other than the WASP-ish powerful ones and still be taken seriously and still make changes. And he was gone.

I held Joanie as tight as I could as she pounded her fists against my back and screamed out. I had bruises the next day and we discovered later that Joanie had cut herself. It wasn't bad but her jeans were a loss. Even if she could have gotten the blood out, they were cut too badly and it wasn't quite the full on hippy era yet when you could just slap a peace sign patch over it.

I don't even know how long we sat on that couch. Eventually she stopped wailing and just cried against me and eventually I found my own tears. The calls came in the evening. You know the kind of calls where people are just reaching out to feel not alone as they are trying to figure out where to go and what to do in a world that just doesn't make sense anymore. Noah called and I could hear his tears as he asked for Joanie. I told her he was on the phone and she just shook her head.

"She's not up to talking," I told him, "Though I don't think anyone in this country is right about now."

"There's some truth there," he said.

"How are you holding up?" I asked pinning the phone against my shoulder so I could sweep up the glass. I was still wandering around in my stocking feet in the kitchen and I'll tell you that a glass cut right on the sole of your foot is about the most annoying thing possible. I didn't feel it right then but I did later when I realized I was leaving red prints everywhere I walked on the linoleum.

"I think I might still be mostly numb," he said and I nodded like he was going to be able to hear that through the phone.

I got off the phone with him and then Judy called. I made Joanie take that call though. I could comfort Judy in the big brother capacity but she needed her sister as much to know that Joanie hadn't come unglued completely as she did to have her big sister tell her somehow it would be alright.

I left Joanie alone and went back to the bedroom to stare at my book. It's not like I was deluding myself into thinking I would get anything done but I had to feel like I was doing something.

The whole country was just in shock and there's not another word for it. Most people sort of holed in and when they were out they just sort of looked dazed. I guess Al had the radio on in the garage and once the news of the shooting hit; he locked the door and turned the sign in the window to close. He didn't reopen until Tuesday. The funeral was Monday and it sort of seemed like everyone was going to a funeral. It was sort of the case though because we all watched it on TV. Joanie and I went to Emma's and we weren't alone. Sam couldn't get off work, of course and the Rouge doesn't shut down for much but Carol and Annie were there with the little ones. Emma was trying to stay strong for everyone but I knew she was as disoriented as the rest of us. See the constitution takes into account times when the president might not be able to do his job for lots of reasons and those include assassination but knowing who's taking over doesn't help answer why anyone would do this to begin with. I know he wasn't the first world leader ever to be killed like that and he wasn't even our first president to be assassinated and certainly not the first to die in office. He wasn't even the last one to get shot though Reagan pulled through alright.

We were just all so bewildered. It was hard to believe that it was real.

We watched the whole thing and I was sitting between Emma and Joanie on the couch so when that little boy who only turned three that very day—can you just imagine turning three years old the day of your father's funeral?—when he saluted his father's casket as the horses took it by, that's when Emma just couldn't stay strong or even pretend to anymore. She turned to me and sobbed and I wrapped an arm around her. My other arm was consoling Joanie who didn't do any better with that image. It's still one of those iconic images. You can run that stupid film of him being shot over and over and we get sort of numb to it after a while but you can't get numb to seeing a little boy in short pants saluting his father's casket as it drives by.

I wasn't alive when President Kennedy was assassinated but I've been through a couple below the belt moments as Jimmy put it and I hope I captured the general feel. (Cue Dicky Dunn from Slap Shot "I was just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.")

This was tough to write. JFK is still a very beloved figure. I made it through with the help of my Bob Dylan centered Pandora which happened to start playing John Lennon's Imagine right when Joanie heard the first report.

I knew this would be hard on her and on Noah as well. I didn't know how hard it would be on me. Just doing the research on the timeline of the day was painful. Oh and those are the direct quotations from Walter Cronkite as he broke into As the World Turns and then after CBS had scrapped the rest of the days programming in favor of keeping people posted on the breaking news. Walter Cronkite was the most unflappable journalist I have ever seen but really check out the video of him delivering the confirmed report of Kennedy's death. I'm certain it's on Youtube.-J