ONE SHINING MOMENT...

THE DAY MY GENERATION CANNOT FORGET...

           So many of our younger readers only know John F. Kennedy from history books.  For so many in my generation November 22 will always be a day we remember with sadness. That was the day our President died. Anyone who was alive can always remember where they were when they learned of the death of the President. For me, it was at basketball practice.I was at Cleveland High School, in Blount County, Alabama which lies deep in the heart of conservative America, I can still remember our history teacher coming into the auditorium that served as our gym. "The President has been assassinated in Dallas." I can still close my eyes and see her standing there in her brown dress with tears in her eyes. I had been holding a basketball when she spoke. The ball was dropped and the sound of it bouncing up and down still ring in my years.  Ping, ping,ping,ping,ping,ping,ping, and then a final very faint ping and the ball rolled away. It rolled toward our home bench. Four chairs from the end. It roll perfectly under the chair. It was a Wilson Jet ball. It wasn't new. It was losing the new orange color and was already turning brown. I went over and picked the ball up from under the chair. I can still feel the softness of the leather and its wonderful smell. I put that ball under my arm and walked away from practice with tears in my eyes. That ball has never been out of the box where I stored it away, except for one day each year.  On this day I take the ball out of the box and hold it, close my eyes, and recall that day and the ones which followed.

      My generation lost something special that day.  We lost our innocence and our trust in the world. For myself, the world had been a pretty wonderful place. The sky was blue and the sun burned bright. There was something in our nation which lived before that day which we have never recovered.  The country was moving forward, problems were being solved, people respected each other, and there was a general feeling America was a special place. In that America dreams still came true. Not ever American felt that way. But back then there was a man who thought we could make things right which were wrong, we could put a man on the moon, and almost everything seemed possible. It was a time so unlike today. Jack Kennedy wasn't perfect. I know that. But the time in which he lived was. In those days we all had all had hammer. We all had work to do. We had a hero.  And then in a blink of an eye he was gone. I often wonder how different the world might have been had he lived. What might have happened. What might have not occurred, how much better our country might have become. I never knew President Kennedy because I was just a skinny little kid from the country. I made it a point to meet his brother, Bobby, and do volunteer work for him. I made it a point to meet his brother, Teddy, and do volunteer work for him. A better person emerged because of that work. it was my own little piece of Camelot.

     Some days are bad ones. Today is a still a day I barely tolerate. Those who are not old enough to remember that day can never understand. I know that these feeble words are a weak attempt to express something so horrible that people my age will never forget.How can you adequately express that to someone who wasn't even alive.  Even today I personally measure all days against that day. There have been a lot of bad days in my life since that fall day. None have been as bad as that day, however. I doubt that any will ever be. For a lot of people in my generation it was the day the world changed.