MEMORIES OF THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

FROM:  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Sound of Drums
November 22, 2013 by Jennifer Gavin

On Friday, November 22, 1963, the students in Mrs. Maxwell’s third-grade class at Sabin Elementary School in southwest Denver got a singular history lesson: the news came in that President John F. Kennedy had been murdered.

Janet Maxwell, a popular young instructor who taught 25 kids reading, math, science and history by turns, was trying to get an educational program on a radio at the front of the classroom – a weekly radio play called “I Am an American” in which actors dramatized the lives of famous figures in U.S. history.  But she couldn’t seem to lock in the station.  So she went next door to Mrs. Grossman’s room to see if they were having difficulty there, as well.

When she came back, perhaps 10 minutes later, her students – I was one of them — were startled to find her weeping.
“Boys and girls, I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “President Kennedy has been shot.  I hope he will be all right.”

We were stunned.  A couple of kids began crying, too.  We were old enough to understand that the leader of our country was fighting for his life, and might even be dead. The president! The president of the United States.

This was not an era of instant communication. There might have been one TV in the whole school.  But we did have the radio in the classroom, and Mrs. Maxwell began dialing around to find news coverage of the shooting.

It was only a matter of minutes before the announcement came: President Kennedy was dead.

Mrs. Maxwell tried to project an air of calm, but her grief could not be hidden, and it upset all of us.

Lunchtime came, and we took our sack lunches and went out on the gravel field beside the school.  Some kids were hysterical.  Other kids were silent, a little frightened by the effect this news had on adults.  I wondered what my Mom and Dad were thinking.  I knew they liked President Kennedy and had voted for him.

We tried to have a normal afternoon in school, but no one could keep their mind on the work.  One boy cracked an inappropriate joke; Mrs. Maxwell upbraided him.  At 3:20 we got to go home.

That night I went to my friend Jonnie Sue’s house for a sleepover.  My mother urged me to have fun and not to dwell too much on the sad event.

But all Jonnie Sue and I did Saturday morning, when we would ordinarily have been watching cartoons, was to stay glued to the wall-to-wall television coverage of the assassination, the swearing-in of LBJ, the speculation about the arrested man, Lee Harvey Oswald.  I walked home at noon and a few hours were spent away from the TV.

Sunday morning I got up and went to the basement, where we had a big black-and-white tube set. As I sat there in my pajamas, police officers were seen moving Lee Harvey Oswald along a corridor crowded with people.  A man—later identified as Jack Ruby — stepped forward, and suddenly Oswald’s face contorted in pain.  He had been shot, right there on live TV, and I had witnessed it as it happened.

I ran upstairs, delivering my first “flash” in a lifetime that later included 18 years as a newspaperwoman: “Dad! Dad! Somebody shot Lee Harvey Oswald!”

The true tragedy came through to me as I watched the state funeral Monday on TV.  JFK’s children stood by their mother as their father’s casket rolled past.  I was only a little older than those kids.  The roll of the drums was unforgettable:

Brum – brum – brum – brrrr

Brum – brum – brum – brrrr

Brum – brum – brum – brrrr

Brum

Brum – ba – brum.

It may be hard for people born more recently to grasp the impact John F. Kennedy had on lives in that era.  In later years I met several people who had been inspired by his challenge to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” and in response had actually joined the Peace Corps or done some kind of public service.  Kennedy’s killing did great damage to their collective spirit.

Within five years, both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were dead at the hands of assassins.  It was a profoundly disquieting time.

But this is America.  New leaders step forward, and we build the bench so new leaders can step forward. Democracy can be untidy, and not always satisfying, but it still beats the alternatives.

Who will fill out that bench – by serving on the city council, or the school board, or in the legislature?

What can you do for your country?