I wouldn't ordinarily write about this, but the calendar this year for November is the same calendar that was in 1963. November 22nd was on a Friday, and Thanksgiving was the following week. I don't know how often calendars repeat themselves as to the days of the week. Maybe it's something like every 7 years or so.
Anyone of a certain age can tell you where they were when they heard the news of the events in Dallas, and what followed. And likewise the same people who are still breathing will tell you where they were they were on 9/11.
I wrote about the 60th anniversary last year, and how at a high school reunion the members of my class year all asked one another, or answered the question, "were you in school that day?"
I asked a friend of mine, Johnny M., who is older than I am, where was he. He told me he was in South Carolina at Army basic training and they had just come in from the rifle range when the news hit. Anyone alive today and old enough to remember the day will tell you exactly what they were doing.
For myself, I was in a high school class on 15th Street at Stuyvesant High School when the announcement came over the PA system to dismiss at around 2:20. There was no reason given and I'm sure the teachers knew nothing at that point as well.
As students, our thinking was that it was connected with the spontaneous rally that sprung up in front of the building before classes that morning. The following day was to be the football match with Stuyvesant's rival DeWitt Clinton high school.
Clinton at that time was in the Bronx, but it stared on 10th Avenue in the 50s. My uncle George went there when he went to high school. I think the building is now John Jay College for criminology. Needless to say, the game was never played.
The American Football League (The AFL was yet merged with the NFL) cancelled their games. The NHL, NBA and significantly the NFL played their games. The NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle made the decision to play because he stated: "It has been a tradition in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedy's game. He thrived on competition." Not all the NFL owners agreed with Rozelle, but they were obligated to play.
I remember being in the family flower shop when the owner of the hair dressing salon in the same building came in stunned, and told us that Kennedy had been shot. We seldom had the radio on and we did not have a TV in the shop. I don't remember when my father got to the shop from his day job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
I was home in Flushing on Saturday morning when the phone rang and my father told me Lee Harvey Oswald had been killed. "What?" My father had already gone to the shop that morning.
My guess is I stayed at home in Flushing and didn't go to the shop that weekend. My guess is there wasn't much business anyway. I just remember it was a very long weekend, with not much on TV news that didn't constantly repeat itself. The country was numb.
In 2024, 1963 seems like more than a lifetime ago. I think of it as being so much in the past as I think my parents felt about WW ll.
To no surprise, no one mentioned or wrote about Friday being the 61st anniversary of the assassination. It is not a milestone year, and most people may not even remember the day of the week, or even the date. They just know it happened in 1963.
The years just keep rolling by.
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