My first clear memory is of a funeral, the funeral of John F. Kennedy.
I know it is a personal recollection, not of news clips, but of a horse, a horse named appropriately enough Black Jack.
There were more funerals, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Kent State, always ending in flag-draped coffins on black and white TV.
Nearly ten years after watching President Kennedy’s funeral, I discovered a book called The Torch is Passed which was full of photos from that event. Midway through the book was a picture of Black Jack. The backward boots I found out, is a tradition from the American Civil War to honor a fallen hero.
The book is large, coffeetable format, but quite thin. It is full of news photographs, beginning with the landing of JFK at Dallas airport an hour before the shooting and ending at the grave in Arlington Cemetery, four days later. As well as photos of the mourning public and visiting dignitaries, there are pictures of the moments after the president was shot, and Lee Harvey Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby. The photos are not captioned, but accompanying text gives a full report of the events staunchly in favor of the “Oswald acted alone” viewpoint.
Because this event loomed large in my youth, I subsequently read many books, saw movies and documentaries to help me understand what was behind those fuzzy black and white images I witnessed as a teenager. Later, analyzing the Zapruder film, I arrived at my own conclusions, based on my own extensive rifle practice (I grew-up German).
After finding The Torch is Passed, (the title is from Kennedy’s inaugural address), I found no more copies in book stores, so it must have been a special printing? I can understand people wanting it as a memento; though I doubt that anyone having company would ever say, “here is a new book we just got, would you like to revisit the time of a great national tragedy?”
I do not think we will ever know what really happened or why. To a young person, it was shocking. The Torch is Passed expanded those images I remembered. It was so much more than a horse with his boots on backwards. The impact sharpened my political consciousness.
AP Productions 1963 100 pp.
3 comments:
I’m also not familiar with the assassination of JFK (before my time) but it’s funny how expressions like “second gunman on the grassy knoll” are familiar to me (although I confess to not knowing much about that theory). This is a moving post, that picture and the significance behind it is very poignant. You’ve sparked an interest I will go and look more at this major event.
Thanks so much for this, Ms Edna – very moving. I’d forgotten all about the horse with the empty saddle and the boots reversed. I’m of the generation so many of whom can remember exactly where they were and how they reacted when they heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. I was 12, and I remember I couldn’t stay in the room with my parents, but had to go up to my room to cry. It astonishes me now to think of the depth of the impression that JFK made on a schoolgirl at a time when we were NOT immersed in 24 hour news and information overload as we are these days.
I too remember Black Jack and the boots reversed.
The news of JFK’s assassination hit my boarding school during study time, i.e. homework for normal kids, and despite the supposed silence that was meant to be maintained in the room that hosted the 200 pupils, the story circulated the room within five minutes from someone illicitily listening to a radio. Being a Catholic college in the UK, there was a greater edge to our shock as JFK was hailed as a heroic figure for the faith, particularly by us boys then in our teens.
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