United We Stood

 

Fifty years ago, Americans stood as one to mourn the tragic passing of President Kennedy. News coverage was wall-to-wall in an era when there were only three national television networks. From midday on Friday the 22^nd through Monday the 25^th, the nation collectively mourned. Together. In a time of extreme sadness, we stood united as one people.

 

At the time, comparisons were frequently made with the passing of Abraham Lincoln 98 years before Kennedy. More contemporary parallels were drawn with the funeral observances of President Franklin Roosevelt who had died suddenly, yet peaceably, eighteen years before Kennedy. Unlike JFK’s brief tenure, FDR had been president for more than twelve years, the longest of any president. He had guided Americans through times of the Great Depression and to the brink of total victory in the greatest of all world wars.

 

Imagine, if you will, the great shock I experienced some years later upon reading that not all Americans mourned the passing of President Roosevelt. I happened upon the memoir of one author who recalled that, as a little girl, she was awakened the evening of FDR’s passing by the sounds of wild revelry in her back yard. Her very Republican parents were hosting a party to celebrate Roosevelt’s passing, symbolically dancing on the president’s grave.

 

There are happier examples of national unity: the national war effort during World War Two, VE Day (end of the war in Europe), VJ Day (victory over Japan), the first man walking on the moon, and…? Less universal celebrations can be tied to sports victories, political triumphs and even prize awards. But it is tragedy that unites Americans like nothing else.  

 

Natural disasters often elicit national empathy and massive relief efforts (Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, Loma Prieta Earthquake). Violent tragedies can create a great upwelling of national sympathy (Challenger explosion, Boston Marathon), but many acts of violence stimulate political backlash from gun nuts with deep pockets (Columbine, Sandy Hook Elementary). The high-water mark of tragedy-cum-unity is clearly 9/11.

Perfect and universal national unity may be too much to ask for with the current state of political polarity. There is something ironic when none other than Rodney King is so frequently quoted in juxtaposition to the current state of affairs: “Can’t we all just get along?” We need to stand together, we really need to.

Texas Schoolbook Depository

      I was only eight, trying to make sense of how the Texas schools related to the killing of the president. My third grade class had been sent home from school. I have no idea if my mother knew I was coming home. Since it was only a two-block walk, I found out soon enough.

     All the curtains were drawn, my mother was in her favorite chair, pulled up close to the television, a box of Kleenex in her lap, used tissues surrounding her. She explained, but I was still confused, “But Mom–you voted for Nixon…”

   “You just don’t understand!” I understood the president was dead, I would come to understand that Lee Harvey Oswald worked in the Texas Schoolbook Depository, a high-rise warehouse in downtown Dallas with a sharpshooter’s view of President Kennedy‘s motorcade. I would, over the next three days, find out a great deal more about the world.

     As was my habit, I ended up two doors down the street at my friend Bobby’s house. Their television was tuned into the wall-to-wall coverage as well. After the umpteenth reference to to President Kennedy as the first and only Catholic president,” I asked Bobby’s mom to help me understand the problem.

     “But Ellie, why is it such a big deal that he was Catholic? Everybody’s Catholic but my family…” She roared, perhaps the first and only time time she would laugh that weekend. I didn’t understand what was so funny.

     My housing tract was full of World War II veterans and their little baby boomer broods. German-American  Catholics had founded the little community that became South San Francisco. As Irish and Italian Americans raised their standard of living, many moved out of the city to the nearest suburb (mine) that already had Catholic churches and communities. Hispanic families soon swelled the neighborhoods, likely for the same or similar reasoning.

     My neighborhood was so Catholic, that one day almost my entire second grade class was missing. All five classes of seven year-olds had been combined into one group of five kids for the day: the two Jewish kids, two Protestants and me. It was First Communion day at St. Veronica’s and the rest of the 150 or so second graders were at mass. So yeah, to me, the world was overwhelmingly Catholic.

     My family made one of their intermittent forays to the First Baptist Church in San Francisco that weekend. It was important to pray for our country that horrible weekend. As I waited for my parents and older siblings to finish readying for church, I sat in front of the TV again. The newsfeed was coming in from the garage of the Dallas police station.

     “Oswald is going to be on TV!” I shouted, but no one came. Then, live on television, I saw the assassin get murdered. The on-camera death of the lone gunman from the Texas School Book Depository would forever be featured in perhaps the most infamous live moment in TV history. A handcuffed prisoner, surrounded by law enforcement officers in the bowels of their very own building, killed on my own television set.

     Sometimes, the adult world just doesn’t make any sense at all.