To the Editor:
Fifty years ago, on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, I was six years old, sitting at my desk in the first grade at Saint Charles Elementary School in Boardman, Ohio. After all of these years I can clearly remember the exact moment when our school principal, Sister Dorthea, announced on the P.A. system that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been killed in Dallas, Texas.
My exact memory is even clearer. It was later in the day, twilight, as my father drove my mother Barbara, my brother Tim, my sister Suzie, and me over to my grandmother’s driveway and said, in a solemn and fatherly tone, “Now kids, there are going to be a lot of people crying here tonight, so we all have to be good, okay?”
My parents loved President Kennedy. I love President Kennedy, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to admire him even more and I know why my parents loved him so much, and why they were so heartbroken when he was killed.
On Nov. 22, 1963 my dear mother not only had a broken heart, she was also six months pregnant with my sister Caroline, the same name as President Kennedy’s daughter.
God bless President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I will always be six years old when I hear his name. In my memory of him as a six-year-old child, he’s forever held in the arms of the angels.
