by Tom Shafer
January 3, 2023
Sometimes a single picture can evoke many powerful, poignant memories. It might be an image of a child’s birthday or a grandparent or an important — or not so important — moment in time. A photograph that adorns my wife’s bureau assuredly does this for me. It portrays a rather large-headed, red-headed baby, smiling, dressed in bib overalls sitting on an orange sofa. Of course, you might guess that the baby is me, and I’m thinking that the snapshot was taken, likely by my father, in 1963.
I don’t actually remember this particular moment (though I do remember the perfectly ‘60s sofa), but I do have a vivid memory from November of that year, and it happens to be my very first one.
My father spent thirty-some years performing military intelligence for our country, and he traveled extensively throughout my youth. As a baby and even into childhood, I recall little of these travels — though I have experienced familiar echoes of my mom, with my sister, brother, and I in tow, dropping him off near the flightline at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where he worked.
So, on Friday, November 22, 1963, at approximately 1:30 EST, President John F. Kennedy was shot while campaigning in Dallas, Texas, and he was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital a little over an hour later. Now, this is not something I remember directly; I have some faint impressions of my mother crying that afternoon, then again later when my dad got home from work, but these memories are shadows at best and may not even be real. That evening, though, while Mary, a family friend, watched the three of us at our home, mom drove my father back to Wright Patt so he could catch a transport plane to Washington, D.C., for work — and JFK’s funeral.
The funeral itself was slated for Monday, November 25th — which today seems like a crazy, tight schedule for a presidential memorial — and after Kennedy lay in repose in the East Room of the White House for twenty-four hours, he was carried by horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol Rotunda where a quarter million people passed by his casket in eighteen hours.
Of course, while that tragedy itself was playing out, our government and intelligence agencies were much concerned that more was at play than just the assassination of a president, that perhaps some entity or regime — the KGB, Cuba, the Mafia, the CIA — was trying to bring down our country. And, it was believed then that this was a very real threat. So while some were preparing for an unexpected state funeral, others — including my father — were ferreting the world for actionable intelligence and working their sources for credible information.
So, on that Monday, while my father performed his duties in D.C., my mother watched, on our nineteen inch black and white television, the services hastily arranged for President Kennedy. Around 11 a.m., the caisson carrying Kennedy’s body left the Capitol complex for the White House, where the funeral procession vacated their limousines to walk approximately three quarters of a mile to St. Matthew’s Cathedral. After an hour and a half funeral mass, the procession proceeded to Arlington National Cemetery where Kennedy was laid to rest and his eternal flame was lit by wife Jacqueline and brothers Robert and Edward.
Sometime during these ceremonies, my brain activated a memory that I can easily recall even today. I remember crawling around on our beautiful, honey-stained hardwood floors. It was a gray but rather warm November day — we played outside in our backyard in the afternoon — but my most vivid memory revolved around my mother, and in particular, my mother weeping as she watched the television. I pulled myself up and walked over to her, and she smiled through her tears and patted me on my head. I looked at the TV, at horses pulling a carriage, but none of it made an impression on me. After that, my memory recedes to gray, and returns the following March on my third birthday.
So that’s it, my very first, very brief, cognition. I suspect that my mom’s tears triggered this moment of awareness — and for good reason. My mother was never one to cry much, if ever. So my best guess is that I had never seen her sobbing before, and it was so striking to me that it engendered this moment of initial perception. A trauma to our country, and my mother, lit my brain into consciousness — and makes for a indelible, albeit surreal, memory for me.
