JFK 50 years past

I was a goggle-boxed little lad having to watch the test card instead of Laramie or whatever. It was pretty shocking, of course. Seems like it's all been said, but whereas a decade or so ago there seemed to be some consensus that it can't have been LHO alone, now they're closing in on the official line again.... Also, always wondered why our American cousins renamed the renamed Cape Canaveral back again after a relatively short time..... Reagan airbrushing?

Let's not forget also, as this is a hifi site, that the 22nd November 1968 saw the release of 'The Beatles' and 'Beggar's Banquet'. And 22/11/1913 was the birthdate of Benjamin Britten.

...and Doctor Who started.

I was working at Gatwick on a summer job when JFK landed there . No problems accessing the airfield where  we went in, but lots of men with machine guns and the like around the terminal building.  

I was down at our local youth club. It was a foggy evening & we'd all just settled down for a night of hard drugs and debauchery (well, maybe not seeing as it was a church youth club...) when it was announced that the president had been shot & we were all to go home. 

We weren't impressed but I guess at the age of thirteen or thereabouts we failed to grasp the significance.

I have always known that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, and have long suspected that you might have been his accomplice Tony. However, as alibis go, that's a pretty watertight one.

I was at my Uncle Charlie's and Auntie Flora's in Peckham when it came on the news. They had a telly high up on a wall which was pretty cool. I remember that all conversation stopped while the news was heard.  Oh and I remember the ashtrays on a heavy strap that hung over the arms of the settee and the chairs! Attacamas? I was seven. Whether I truly knew who he was at the time or whether I now know so much about him and I think i might have known about him at the time I can't honestly say. However I was certainly aware of the family after that as it  lurched from one crisis to another for the next decade. Everything seemed to come back to that moment when the dream was shattered.

In my second year at a CAT, working in my study and one of the guys with a radio came in and told us the news, those where the days when there was one TV for 250 students. So we all went to the common room to see what was happening.

The most moving item was the episode of "That was the week that was" broadcast on the following Saturday evening, it was a very short program dedicated to Kennedy, with a very moving sung by Millicent Martin.  A very sober evening and atmosphere in the common room.

Many years later I had several visits to Dallas and went to the Book Depositary and up to the window where the shot was alleged to have been fired from.  Also went to South Fork to tour the house.

Could have been worse. Imagine if he'd been on a bike.

I don't remember JFK's death. I was about 10 months old at the time. I see the assassination as one of those defining moments in history that has since shaped American and world culture. It marked the end of the baby boomer generation, the beginning of the British invasion, a loss of innocence (perhaps naivete), escalation of US involvement in Civil Rights and Viet Nam, and increased dissociation between America's youth and the establishment.

I have very vivid memories of the news when RFK and MLK were shot less than five years later. I think it's important to remember these individuals and reflect on their accomplishments and the hope they instilled in people. Especially MLK; rarely can a person accomplish so much good for so many.