Perspective

LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One, November 22, 1963.

Today, November 22, is the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered back in 1963. You have to be at least 55 years old to sign up for the memoir classes I lead in Chicago, so I knew all my students would remember that day. I couldn’t be sure that all of them would want to write about such a melancholy time in our history, though, so I came up with a writing prompt that could be considered in many different ways. The topic: Love Field.

Love Field is the airport where the famous photograph was taken of LBJ in an airplane being sworn in as president. Jackie Kennedy is standing next to him, still in the pink Chanel suit she wore that day. The memoir writers could write about how that day in 1963 affected them, where they were when they learned that JFK had been assassinated, whether or not LBJ being sworn in on Love Field changed their lives. I suggested that anyone who didn’t want to think about those sad troubling times might consider writing about what it feels like to be surrounded by love, a “field of love” sort of thing.

Two students wrote love poems, and another wrote a poignant piece about her enduring love for her husband, who is in his 90s now. Wanda took the topic into, well, left field. She wrote about the fields she’s loved over her 91 years: Wrigley Field, Marshall Field’s, Midway Air Field. She described ushers escorting her right onto the baseball field to meet the players after an East-West Negro League All-Star game at Comiskey Park. She met Larry Doby on that same baseball field years later, after he broke the color barrier in the American League.
Other students chose to write about where they were, and what they were doing, 49 years ago.

Bruce was a young seminary school graduate back then, and earlier that month the preacher at his church had asked if he’d be willing to give a guest sermon on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. He opened his essay saying, “It should havbe been so simple.” The Sunday he gave his sermon turned out to be two days after JFK died. Bruce’s downstairs neighbors, both secular humanists, asked to accompany him to church that day. “I kept thinking what can I say that will be meaningful for them. I asked them after service and they said, ‘you did the best you could.’”

Andrea was 14 years old in 1963. She went to school that Friday morning feeling dreamy about the school dance she’d be attending that night. News of the President’s death came over a loudspeaker into her classroom. “My 14-year-old desires collided with sorrow,” she wrote, admitting that while the world watched their TV screens in horror, all she wanted was to go to that dance. “While I waited to hear the dance’s fate, Jacquelyn Kennedy flew back to Washington, D.C., accompanying her dead husband’s coffin,” she wrote. “As I primped my hair and chose an outfit, Mrs. Kennedy planned a state funeral.”

School officials did not cancel the dance. Andrea titled her essay “Perspective” and ended it like this: . “Today, forty nine years later, I can’t remember one single moment of that dance. However, I still feel the loss of a dream.”

After retiring from a long career as a journalist, Giovanna signed up for my memoir class to get more comfortable writing her own story, rather than reporting on the lives of others. She wrote for Life Magazine in 1963 and after the events on November 22 she was asked to head to Washington, D.C. to report on President Kennedy’s funeral.

Life’s Richard Stolley had negotiated for print rights to the Zapruder film, and before she left her New York City office she sat with her fellow reporters in the New York office reviewing the film. Out of decency and respect for the President’s family they decided not to publish every frame. “It was horrific,” she said.

Giovanna worked with Life Photographer Bob Gomel, photographing at two location. “We had credentials to a rooftop where we watched Jackie Kennedy walk with a long stride and a firm step behind her husband’s body to St Matthew’s Cathedral,” she wrote. “Our second spot was at St Matthew’s Cathedral where little John Kennedy saluted the body of his father as he lay on the caisson.” Giovanna’s piece read more like a piece of journalism than a memoir, and after she finished reading it aloud I suggested she might add more emotion, tell readers how these events made her feel. She took a moment to give my suggestion some consideration, and then answered in two simple words:

“I can’t.”