The First Worst Day of My Life

November 22, 1963 started like most of my days as a teenager. Mom drove me to Laurel Senior High School, a large brick building in the center of Laurel, Maryland. I was doing fairly well in school. English, of course, was my favorite subject. I was a ‘constant reader” and I’d probably finished that morning’s edition of the Washington Post. Laurel was about 20 miles from D.C. and The Post was almost our local paper…well, that and the weekly Laurel Leader.

Back then I wanted to be a writer, maybe even a journalist. And since The Post was so close, maybe write for it. I followed the news and I followed politics. I knew what the president was doing every day — where he’d be and why. I knew that it was a year before the next election and he wanted to be front and center in a large southern state, his vice president’s state. I knew that was important for his reelection. And I wanted him reelected.

He’d become one of my heroes. I felt (now remember this is a 16 year old’s views) he was strong in the Cold War and he believed in Civil Rights. The second one earned him the ire of my father, who said, in my presence, some pretty nasty things about him.

That day the President would land at Dallas’ Love Airfield and then motorcade to and through Dallas. Eventually he would be in Houston where he would deliver an address.

He never got the chance.

I was in Chemistry class when the teacher stopped the class and we all listened to the voice of Walter Cronkite over the school’s intercom. Students looked down at their desks and then as sobs raked through me, they looked at me. I was not ashamed of my tears. I’d lost a hero. The country had lost a leader. I was devastated.

My high school was across from a Catholic Church and school. All schools were closing early. As I waited for Mom to pick me up, I watched the custodians lowering our flag to half-mast. The bells of the Catholic Church rang out and didn’t stop. I thought I could still hear them at home, two miles away.

The only thing my mother said was, “I’m sorry, Mitzi. I’m sorry.”

It was a Friday and the next few days were a blur of black and white television pictures, of the widow, the children, the brothers, the cadence of the drums, the horse with boots backwards in the stirrups.

At 16 I felt like my world had imploded. My father mellowed toward me and even put the Rockwell portrait of the President with black crepe in the large picture window of his barbershop.

At 16 I felt I would never smile again. But I did, about three months later — and that’s another story.

At 16 I felt that I would never feel this pain again. But I did, years later — and that’s also another story.

It was only my first worst day of my life. Just the first.