61 YEARS AGO TODAY
Like today, it was the Friday before Thanksgiving.
The old USS Rustbucket was tied up to India Pier on the North Island Naval Air Station down in San Diego. We’d spent the week preparing for the big Admiral’s Inspection that was scheduled for the day.
First was to be the inspection of ship’s crew, followed by an inspection of the ship itself.
We sailors were released to go onto North Island following the inspection, which ended as I recall around 1100 hours. We were to be back aboard by 1300 hours, at which time the ship would go to weekend holiday footing and we would be on liberty. My friend Bill and I each had a 72 hour pass.
We planned to spend it over in University Village at the home of the Chief’s daughter who was the center of our little circle of friends. Maybe go out to the Cinnamon Cinder and go dancing, the Righteous Brothers would be there Saturday night.
We headed over to the EM club on North Island to get burgers for an early lunch.
We came around a corner and saw a big barrel-chested “Gold Braid” Chief Petty Officer in Dress Blues running up the street, shouting something we couldn’t understand. It was a very strange moment.
Closer, we could see he was a Chief Aviation Boatswain’s Mate. In those days, there weren’t Senior Chiefs or Master Chiefs, but if there had been, this guy would have been a Senior Master Chief.
He got closer. We could finally understand his words.
“The president’s been shot! The president’s been shot!”
As he ran past, one of us - I forget who - yelled “Hey Chief, that’s not funny!”
He stopped. Turned and gave us that Chief’s Baleful Stare that rooted a sailor to the spot where he stood.
He came over, stood before us, looked us up and down for a long silent moment, long enough to get uncomfortable.
And then…
“I said, the PRESIDENT has been SHOT!”
“Yessir Chief!”
“I advise you to go back to your ship.”
“Yes, Chief.”
And that was how I learned that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the first politician whose campaign I ever took part in, whose words on his inuguration - “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what you can do for your country” - had electrified me as I watched the TV, playing hooky from school that day; they still do when I say them to myself, had been shot.
We got back to the ship in time to see Walter Cronkite tell the country that the president was dead. He put down his glasses and stared at camera, tears flowing.
As it turned out, November 22, 1963 was merely the first of too many days in my life I can never forget.
I remember every moment of that day and was glued to the television for weeks that stretched into months gleaning every detail. I had given birth to my first child just six weeks before. I remember weeping over her crib not knowing where this was all going to lead. The enormity of it was breathtaking. Soon it was Martin Luther King, then Robert F. Kennedy. Those were such difficult years. To think that 75 million voters are perpetuating the hatred of those dark days. I will never understand.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what you can do for your country”. So shameful that we are soon to have a president and a cabinet full of lackeys that claim all they do is for us, when actually the reverse is true.