As the World Stopped: Four Days in November

by Irene Daniel

Tomorrow marks the 50^th anniversary of one of the most memorable week-ends of my entire life: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was the beginning of an awareness in me, and a love for history that has sustained me for half a century.

I was in 2^nd grade and had come home for lunch at 11:30 a.m., MST. My mother always watched As the World Turns, which came on at that time. I don’t remember what my mom made me for lunch, probably a tuna sandwich or a bowl of Campbell’s soup. But I will never forget the images laid out before my eyes as my family camped out in front of our TV for four days in November, in 1963.

I remember the bulletin coming on the TV, with just a voice over; and the look of astonished horror on my mother’s face. We were frozen in time. And then the official bulletin; we watched Walter Cronkite read live before our eyes: President Kennedy was dead.

My brothers came home for lunch too, and none of us went back to school after lunch because we were all crying so hard. Fridays were usually pretty happy days for us, but not this Friday. The next three days I remember the news coverage being constant and we would watch until we couldn’t stand it anymore. Then, my mother would turn the TV on again, and we would gather around the new American family hearth – the television. As Americans, we have experienced this national collective grief far too often; but that was the very first time.

This atmosphere of extreme and sudden grief was important for me in another, and very personal, way. I remember watching Caroline and thinking, “I lost my Daddy too.” Although my father hadn’t died, but was merely divorced from my mother, the dynamics of our relationships with him changed forever after the divorce. Our house burned down on Christmas night, 1961, and my brothers and I moved away with our mother; away from the only world we'd known. And all that I knew at the time was that my Daddy, the center of my universe, was no longer available to play with me, and to love me.

Divorce, especially for a Catholic family, was still something of a disgrace in those days, and I felt lonely and confused; unable to navigate the mix of emotions produced by the unusual facts of my young life. The overwhelming grief that engulfed our nation provided me with a catalyst for pent up emotions that I did not know how to express. I cried and cried. I cried for Caroline. And I cried for me. Only such a tremendous showing of shock and disbelief could provide an adequate outlet for a grief as large as mine.

And yet, in the midst of all of this utter sadness, I was also bedazzled and awed by all the pomp, dignity and patriotic splendor on display for all the world to see. We are Americans, and we are a special and noble lot. The entire world came to Washington, D.C., to pay respects and to witness the grandeur of our American display of State Ceremony. The world seemed to stop for those four days in November. It seemed that there was absolutely nothing in the entire universe that was of greater importance than to honor our fallen American President Kennedy, our eternal American Prince.

I came away from that from that week-end knowing two things that I didn’t know before, two things that have sustained me in tough times these past fifty years. First, I learned that two hearts can understand the same grief, like Caroline and me. None of us are immune from devastating loss. Whether you were growing up in the White House or in a small Mexican-American family home in the desert southwest, losing your Daddy is tough.

And I learned that my country truly must be the greatest on earth. The awe-inspiring display of military and patriotic grandeur still takes my breath away when I watch footage thereof. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced anything like that state funeral in my lifetime. I know I will never live a moment like that again.

When I watch the footage of little John, Jr. saluting his father's flag-draped casket as it rolled by, I remember hearing my mother give out a little cry, a shriek of unspeakable loss as she cried into a bath towel. And it rained all week-end, as though the universe was acknowledging the gaping hole in our southwestern American hearts, responding with a gray and weeping sky.

I remember and I appreciate my life-long love of history and politics. I think it all started during those four days in November, when the world stopped.