The Mellowing Effects of Time

Today marks 45 years since the assassination of President John Kennedy, and I haven't seen a mention of it anywhere. I don't know what the country was like before Kennedy was killed; I was 15 months old when he died. But I, like everyone my age, had an awareness of Kennedy and his death all through my childhood; it was always there, lurking--which may have something to do with my melancholy nature. It was something younger Baby Boomers were sort of born into, and though we never talked about it ourselves, it was a topic of fascination and intrigue among the adults.

I distinctly remember when, though it seemed as if it were part of "history," JFK's death was still a national obsession. Then again that was a long time ago, too. When I was a kid--even when I was in high school--there was an unspoken feeling sense that America had been wounded. Sort of like the atmosphere that still hangs in the air when you walk downtown in New York--it's been seven years since 9-11, and it has gone from dominating conversation to being mentioned in hushed tones, but America is not yeat healed.













Up until the mid 80s, TV specials, films, and news-broadcast retrospectives dominated the airwaves around the anniversary date. I recall Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, old newsreels, and other programs being on TV in the living room as I helped my Mom prepare the "make-ahead" dishes for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. It seemed sad to me that JFK and Thanksgiving seemed to be so linked. Even through the mid 90s, there was always at least one or two programs on TV around this time of year that had to do with the assassination. It started to fade after Jackie Kennedy's death in 1994, and really petered out with John-John's death in 1997. Now there's nary a mention.

Camelot, it seems, is really over, and John F. Kennedy finally belongs to the ages.