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Dean Micheletto’s name would have vanished into my mental nether land long ago but for one moment in our lives. It is that moment that distinguishes Dean from the rest of my 6th grade class at John Hancock Elementary in Chicago.
It was 1963, the era of stay-at-home moms, one car families and lunch at home. Hancock school was a by-product of the Baby Boom, yet new as it was, it did not have a cafeteria. Kids who ate at school (and there were few) brought bag lunches and notes from parents explaining why it was necessary for them to eat at school.
Mom’s midday menu fit the dankness of the day perfectly. Hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches awaited the 3 young Budells. The hot combo was a fitting reward for walking home through a cold drizzle. A chill wind cut through the stark, leafless trees lining the sidewalks to our bungalow, so I hustled every step of the 5 minute trek.
We were a true “boomer” family. My brother (5th grade) and sister (4th) rendezvoused at the kitchen table where Mom had everything ready. Bozo’s Circus was on WGN at lunch time, so we wolfed our food down to catch a few minutes of the show before returning for the 1 PM resumption of classes.
Mom shooed us out the door around 12:50. This would allow for a few minutes of free time to kibitz with class mates outside before we were allowed back in the building.
Dean Micheletto’s house was across the street from school. We kidded him about his short walk to and from, and it was his habit to wait until the last possible minute before returning from lunch. Those extra minutes home made Dean the first to learn news that would soon sweep the playground like brushfire.
As we assembled in single file lines by grade to march back to class, Dean came running up, arms flailing wildly, his eyes poached wide behind book-wormish black glasses. He was very out of breath for a very short run.
“Kennedy got shot!”, he said. We looked at Dean, heads cocked in great dubiousness. “Really! Kennedy got shot!”.
The significance was not lost on a history savvy 6th grade kid like me. I knew there had been 3 previous Presidential assassinations, but in the modern times of 1963 we simply assumed it could never happen again.
Playground chatter subsided as the school bell tolled our return to class. Stunned, we waited in line for the doors to open. We filed in quietly and took our seats in Miss Meyer’s classroom.
Miss Meyers was a kind, but no-nonsense woman. In the eyes of an 11 year old, she seemed ancient, but was more likely just middle aged. Like so many others teachers, her first name was “Miss”. Short, stout and stern, Miss Meyers packed her authoritarian demeanor behind a pair of wire frame glasses.
We sat in our class room afraid to talk. With each tick of the classroom clock, our anxiety deepened. I looked up and it was 1:07. Our teacher’s tardiness only stirred the gathering gloom. We continued to digest the shocking news of the President’s shooting through knots in our stomachs.
Abruptly, the floor-to-ceiling wooden door opened and Miss Meyer’s strode in, head bowed. The hanky usually wadded into the sleeve of her dark dress was in her hand and she was furiously wiping the lens of her glasses with it. The area under her eyes was moist. She stood by her desk continuing to clean her bi-focals for a seeming eternity, until she turned to say what her face announced the moment she entered the classroom.
“The President is dead”, she said softly.
It was at that precise moment, the 50s truly ended and the 60s began.
The innocent 50s, represented so beautifully by the misadventures of Leave it to Beaver, had shifted gears seamlessly into the “Camelot”days of the 60s and the Kennedy Presidency. JFK and Jackie. Glamour had replaced a great General in the White House. We had a young President with young children. Elvis was still making hits and Annette was still a Mousketeer. The early years of the 60s were a cultural continuum of the previous decade.
That era came to an instant conclusion, shattered by shotgun blasts in Dallas on 11/22/63.
On that date, an obscure recording artist named Skeeter Davis sang “The End of the World” and that is very much how we suddenly felt. Our teacher was crying! Teachers weren’t supposed to cry and Presidents weren’t supposed to die- at least not in the way described by details emerging from Texas that afternoon.
We all wanted to go home. Mom and Dad could explain this. After an interminable quiet time in our classroom, Miss Meyers dismissed us at 2PM, sending our shaken little souls back under a low, gray sky- into that same chill wind that cut through the leafless trees chaperoning the walk back home.
America began watching TV like we had never watched it before, most watching this unbelievable event in black and white.
We watched news anchors smoking cigarettes, seated before wood-paneled walls, questioning a man named Za-pru-dah. He’d seen the President’s head explode with the 3rd gun shot, and captured it on what would become the most famous 50 feet of 8 millimeter film ever recorded.
As darkness fell, we watched Air Force One land in Washington, and we sat dumbfounded watching the widow Jackie disembark in her blood stained dress and pillbox hat. We watched as a new face- a very dour face- assumed the leadership of America.
Lyndon Johnson was now President and he spoke to a shocked America after watching his predecessor’s hearse to depart the airport tarmac.
Johnson said more with his face than with his words. Eras had changed tracks like boxcars in a rail yard. Outlooks transformed. We’d gone from a vigorous leader to a man whose long face spoke in a dreary drawl. No one expected him to crack jokes, but Johnson was a different brand of leader. There was nothing in his demeanor to re-inflate the crushed spirit of a country.
That night, Dad took me to our local Walgreen’s. The store was busy but cloaked in quiet. Towering stacks of Chicago Tribunes stood like monuments to the occasion just inside the store’s entrance.
”JFK DEAD” screamed the simple, large headline, placed over a subhead that read “Johnson Becomes 36th President”. A color portrait of a smiling JFK sat juxtaposed to our new President. One man was smiling, the other- in the language of a 6th grader- looked like a real sour puss.
The photos reinforced the change we were feeling in the wake of this unbelievable event.
I hadn’t held my Dad’s hand in several years but I grabbed it that night because the world was suddenly scary. Adults looked nervous and worried. The memory of that moment in Walgreen’s remains so vivid, I can still smell the fresh ink emanating from that huge pile of news papers. They all bore the word “EXTRA” in red letters on the top of Page 1.
After Dad and I got back to the house, we again sat riveted to our black and white Zenith. If he left the room, I followed. I did not want to be alone.
How to explain the fear? I don’t know. In 1963, kids knew very well about the ongoing threat from the Soviet Union. The previous year, we’d spent 13 days watching the sky for missiles during 10:30 AM air raid drills while the Cuban Missile Crisis drama played out. Eisenhower made us feel safe. JFK was so very Presidential in crisis.
LBJ looked like the rest of us did. Long faced, sad and scared.
Saturday’s weather was much improved. The weather system that cleared Dallas and lit the assassination stage in brilliant sunshine had cleared Chicago. We watched TV continuously, breaking only for lunch and dinner. News anchors named Huntley and Cronkite kept us abreast on rapidly developing details of the state funeral. We simply sat mesmerized by the wall to wall coverage.
Sunday was no different, really. Mom prepared a nice lunch and we all sat at the table together doing soup, sandwiches and crunchy dills. I ate quickly and resumed my station in front of the living room TV. They were about to bring out Lee Harvey Oswald and I didn’t want to miss this glimpse of the man suspected of murdering the President.
I remember seeing big, square faces under ten-gallon hats conducting what seemed to be a routine procedurem and then a figure burst onto the screen and fired a gun. Chaos erupted. Again, the unthinkable.
“They just shot Oswald!”, I screamed towards the kitchen where the rest of the family was still finishing lunch. My father shouted back something dismissive, but I persisted with the breaking news. “They just shot Oswald Dad! Really!”. That brought him and the rest of the Budells into the living room.
An hour later, Oswald wad dead, too. What next?
School was in session for a half-day Monday, strictly to pay tribute to our fallen President with an assembly. Right after the 9AM start of class, Miss Meyers handed me a slip of paper with a few sentences typed onto it.
She had selected me and 3 others to read the tribute on stage in a gathering of all grades in the Hancock gymnasium. I was always picked for assembly gatherings because even then, my voice projected well. In 1963, schools did not come equipped with microphones and speakers.
The 4 of us, 2 boys and 2 girls, nervously lifted our prepared text and read them to an audience that was unnaturally still, considering it was comprised of 300 kids from grades 2 through 6. We seemed to sense (and our teachers implied) that any goofing around on the day of John Kennedy’s funeral would be treated as an act of juvenile treason.
I don’t remember any of what I read from the page that day. As I dropped my hands to my side after finishing my little speech, I lost my grip on the paper. It slowly floated gently, left to right and right to left until it hit the floor. My neck and face felt a red hot blush, as if somehow I destroyed the solemnity of the occasion with my loose grip.
At the assembly’s conclusion, the principal thanked and dismissed us, sending us back to our stay-at-home moms and one-car driveways. Back to our black and white TVs and Walter Cronkite. Back to the mostly grey image of a very young boy saluting his daddy’s casket as it passed in front of him in Washington, DC. It was serious pomp and circumstance, glistening in the short sunlight of a beautiful fall day.
John F. Kennedy was a flawed man. All men are. Thus, no man has ever conducted a flawless Presidency. No Presidency should be judged until sufficient time has passed to allow for historical perspective.
Every time I visit Arlington National Cemetery, and stand at the Kennedy grave site, I look east down Constitution Avenue and remember watching our black and white Zentih, mesmerized by the sight of JFK’s coffin making the slow journey to eternity.
I wish he was around today, at age 91, to remind us of the words he spoke at his 1961 inauguration.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather, what you can do for your country”.
We no longer live in that America. “What’s the government going to do for me?”, we ask. We want checks, but no balances. As President Kennedy’s mantra becomes a hollow echo in history, we- as we go to the polls again to elect our next President, should keep in mind the words of another American President- Thomas Jefferson.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away”.
What I can do for my country is vote, and I will keep Jefferson’s words in mind as I cast my ballot.
When the 22nd rolls around, I’ll remember the look on Dean Micheletto’s face, an indelible memory after 45 years.
You never forget the person who told you the world just changed, and will never be the same again.
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