• Lunatic Writer
  • Novels & Novellas
    • Big Ledge Front
    • Big Ledge Back >
      • Big Ledge Review
      • Big Ledge More Reviews
      • Chicken Thief
      • Heaven
    • Loose Ends >
      • Loose Ends Back >
        • Loose Ends Interview
        • Reviews
    • Lunatics >
      • Copernicus Images
    • The Draper Catalogue >
      • Reviews
    • Eta Carinae >
      • Reviews
    • All Saints Day
    • Eta Carinae
    • Echoes
    • Book Reviews
  • Short Fiction
    • Sweet Melancholy
    • More Short Fiction
  • Drama
    • Willful Pursuits
    • More Willful Pursuits
    • Sproule's Folly
    • Gravity
    • Audio Drama
    • All the World's a Stage
    • Theatre Reviews
  • Astro
  • Author's Blog
  • Comments & Contacts
  • Res Naturae
    • Valhalla Provincial Park >
      • Gwillim Lakes
    • Record Ridge
    • Skattebo
    • Rock Slide Lake
    • Kootenay National Park >
      • Juniper
      • Marble Canyon
      • Paint Pots
      • Cobb Lake
      • Redstreak
      • Stanley Glacier
    • Waterton Lakes National Park >
      • Bear's Hump
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Bertha Lake
      • Wall Lake
      • Prince of Wales
    • Old Growth Forest
    • Ripple Ridge
  • Abroad
    • Jamaica >
      • Aerial Creatures
      • Land Creatures
      • Ocean & Beach
      • Miscellaneous
    • France >
      • Paris I
      • Le Sud
      • Paris II
    • Oregon >
      • Washington
      • Cannonbeach
      • North Coast
      • Portland & Corvallis
      • Central Coast
      • Ashland
      • Crater Lake
      • Mt. Rainier
    • Belize >
      • Birds of Belize
      • Daily Life
      • Water Scenes
    • Greece >
      • Athens
      • Hydra
      • Argolid
      • Crete
      • Santorini
      • Mykonos & Delos
      • Delphi
    • Canyon Country >
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Valley of Fire
      • Zion NP
      • Bryce Canyon NP
      • Grand Canyon
      • Sedona
    • Cuba >
      • Varadero
      • Jeep Tour
      • Havana
    • Cozumel >
      • All-Inclusive
      • Island Tour
      • Tulum
      • About Town
    • UK & Ireland >
      • London >
        • Ealing
        • Tower of London
        • Westminster
        • British Museum & the Eye
        • Thames & Greenwich
        • Victoria & Albert Museum
      • Northwest >
        • Grasmere
        • Chester
        • Liverpool
      • Southeast >
        • North Marston
        • Oxford
        • Hughenden Manor
        • Brighton
      • IRELAND >
        • Dublin
        • Killarney & Dingle
        • Muckross
      • York
      • West Midlands >
        • Hereford
        • Shrewsbury
      • Wales
      • Southwest >
        • Bath
        • Cornwall
    • Arizona >
      • Phoenix
      • Biosphere
      • Tucson
      • Nogales
      • Tombstone
      • Chiricahua
      • Kitt Peak
      • Casa Grande
  • I See You
  Lunatic Writer

Reflections on JFK

11/25/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture


It is one of the clichés of 20th century pop-history that everyone of a certain age will remember where they were at the time of JFK’s assassination. It so happens this is actually true in my case (though, inexplicably, not true for the first moon landing.)

On Nov. 22, 1963 I was sitting in my Grade Five classroom at Fenside Dr. PS in Toronto. I can even picture where I was in the classroom, very near the centre—which must have been the teacher’s choice, not mine.  Over the intercom, the school principal announced that President Kennedy had been shot and killed while in Dallas.

I was always good with geography. I knew exactly where Dallas was.  “Darn southerners!” I blurted out.  I can’t remember if anyone else said anything. It was a sweeping generalization, even for a ten-year-old, and I hope I don’t harbour any long-standing resentment against southerners. Yet I was a product of my time.  Even my ten-year-old-not-even-a-native-American sensibility was aware of the fact that President Kennedy and the “south” hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on many things, that Southern politicians had, in fact, been obstructionist in many ways. (Has very much changed, I sometimes wonder?)

So for me to blurt out what I did was maybe not surprising.

I’m sure I had not stopped to think that Vice-president Johnson himself was a southerner.  Almost certainly I had no understanding that Johnson was a great supporter of the space program and had probably made an important contribution in Kennedy deciding to send men to the moon.

I was among many millions of Kennedy admirers in the early sixties.  I don’t know why.  I was swept up in a phenomenon that I could feel but didn’t understand.  I even have a fuzzy memory of watching at television debate between Nixon and Kennedy and thinking that Nixon looked better on the TV than Kennedy.  It was probably more a judgement of the contrast capabilities of our TV than anything and maybe the fact that Kennedy seemed to have a weird accent.




Picture
Picture
Yet somehow, very shortly after Kennedy took office, I was as completely swept up in the Kennedy mania as anyone, including my quite adoring mother. (I guess Canadians were just getting warmed up for Pierre Elliot Trudeau.) Someone had produced a humorous LP record in which actors portrayed the president and other members of his staff and family.  To my Grade Five ears, the skits on this record were hilarious and it seemed only natural that I should try to imitate them.  I found that, with a little practice,  I could do a very good imitation of the president. I quickly memorized much of the dialogue.  I think we even did some sort skit at school based on that record, and it was me who got to play Kennedy, confidently speaking with my faux-New England accent.



Picture
Von Braun & Kennedy
For Christmas one year (1962?), my parents bought me a record which included excerpts of some of Kennedy’s most famous speeches.  I remember them to this day.  My wife remembers poetry by Keats or Coleridge or even Shakespearean sonnets.  This is what I remember:

And so my fellow Americans, I say to you: ask not what your country can do for YOU, but what YOU can do for your country [applause, but Kennedy continues]
My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America can do for you but what TOGETHER, we can do for the freedom of man.

And from another speech:

In 1990 the age of space will be entering its second phase. And our hope is that in this great new sea, as on earth, the United States is second to none.

 
You were a complex man, President Kennedy.  Brilliant, yet flawed. 
But for one thing I unreservedly thank you:

We choose to go the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard!


 

 
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.






    ​Author

    Brian d'Eon, fiction writer: whose work modulates between speculative, historical and magical realism.

    Categories

    All
    1917
    2010
    Ainsworth
    Albert Einstein
    Apollo XI
    Astronomer
    Baillie Grohman
    Baillie-Grohman
    Begbie
    Big Ledge
    Blade Runner 1982
    Blade Runner 2049
    Bluebell Mine
    Book Review
    British Colonist
    Bruce Dern
    Capitalism Vs Climate
    Chapbook
    Civilization
    Climate Change
    Cosmology
    C.S. Lewis
    Dandelions
    Davie
    Dead Crow
    Deon
    D'Eon
    Diana Morita Cole
    Draper Catalogue
    Dreams
    E-books
    Economics
    Editing
    Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
    Eta Carinae
    Fassbender
    Flashbacks
    Gravity
    Gray
    Green Manifesto
    Grohman
    Guess Who's Back?
    Hammill
    Harold Fry
    Hayao Miyazaki
    Hendryx
    Hitler
    Internees
    Isaac Newton
    Jamaica
    Jfk
    Jobs Vs Environment
    John Keats
    Kenneth Clark
    Kootenays
    Korolev
    Lily Langtry
    Lunatics
    Mark Twain
    Matt Haig
    Mikado
    Millet
    Nebraska Movie
    Nelson
    Nixon
    Novel
    Novel Drafts
    Novella
    Novel Structure
    Opium
    Oscar Nominees
    Photography
    Pitch
    Plague
    Point Of View
    Primack & Abrams
    Publishers
    Queenie Hennessy
    Rachel Joyce
    Rejection
    Review
    Richard Bausch
    Sam Mendes
    Saoirse Ronan
    Science And Religion
    Science Literacy
    Sean Arthur Joyce
    Serkis
    Shakespeare
    Sideways
    Sinixt
    Sproule
    Sputnik
    Steamer
    Stranger Things
    Submissions
    Sweet Melancholy
    Telescope
    The Humans
    The Price Of Transcendence
    The Wind Rises
    Travel
    Treasure Beach
    Van Gogh
    Victoria
    View From The Center Of The Universe
    Von Braun
    Winter Photos
    Yeats

    Archives

    February 2022
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    June 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012