cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
The Year They Postponed The Game
It was cold, more damp than cold really, and the brisk wind that seemed to always be sweeping across Columbus in November tore into my ski jacket. Twenty years old and a college student, I would rather shiver than don a hat, scarf and gloves. I stood in front of the Varsity Club on Lane Avenue, suitcase by my side, and stuck out my thumb. It was the weekend of the Ohio State – Michigan game, The Game, and if I could hitch a ride to Dayton I’d be able to watch the activities from Ann Arbor on a color TV and drink free beer from my parent’s refrigerator.
Luck! A fuzzy, dark green '57 Plymouth two-door, slowed and then stopped in front of me. An Ohio State sweatshirt clad kid jumped out, threw the seatback forward, and gestured to get in. I threw my suitcase across the back seat and settled in. As we pulled away from the curb, the driver, another OSU student, turned his head. "Someone took a shot at the President."
It took a second for the news to settle into a coherent thought in my mind. We crossed the Olentangy, driving by the Ag School fields, and the radio was filled with anxious voices, reporters in Washington and Dallas trying to put the pieces together. A parade, an open car, bright, clear day, a warm, welcoming crowd, a bend in the route, shots -- no one seemed to able to pin down numbers -- One? Two? Three? More? And where from? Two reporters weren't sure, but they saw police charging into a building, some kind of warehouse for Texas schools.
Walter Cronkite settled in, the network informed us that all programming had been cancelled, this would be a simulcast, radio and TV, for the CBS system. The veteran reporter instinctively went about his business, pulling together what was known: that the President had been shot at, that the limousine had taken off for Parklands Hospital, that he had been taken into the trauma room. He paused, and then began to field reports and send out requests for information to the news team over the air.
Rumors ran wild as the Plymouth headed along route 142 outside London, Ohio: he was wounded, he was dead, Vice President Johnson had entered the hospital with his hand over his heart because he'd had a heart attack, it was the KKK, it was Cuba, it was the Mafia, it was one man, it was a team.
I listened, not realizing that I was hearing a news story being put together in the open, on the fly. Allowed to eavesdrop as leads were filtered, crosschecked, verified or left hanging, I felt as if I were watching a tennis match, the play going back and forth.
New questions were examined: How good was the hospital? Who would be the surgeons? Would the Vice President take over temporarily? The last question took them back to the rumor that Johnson had suffered a heart attack. That would leave Mike Mansfield, the Speaker of the House, next in line in the order of succession. In a day when politicians were allowed something of a private life, the public did not know that Mansfield had a serious problem with the bottle, but something in the tone of the reporter's voices, a verbal rolling of the eyes, gave me the idea that Mansfield was not the person they would pick in such a crisis.
We sat in silence, three college students riding across the state together, not knowing each other's politics, majors, hometowns, not even each other's names. We were too absorbed in the moment to go through any of the introductory ritual. Mute, concentrating, our thoughts locked inside us and we pondered what all of this looked like.
Hope lingered: In the car, in the voices of the reporters, and as I would later find when sharing my story of this day, in the hearts of most Americans. Hope that Kennedy was only slightly wounded, that he was still alive, and that his injuries would not take from us that engaging smile, that resolute voice, that sense that a young, brave, strong father was in charge of our country.
It was just outside of Wilberforce, a few minutes before one, when Cronkite's voice tightened, "the Bishop of Dallas, Reverend Thomas Gorman, has arrived at the hospital, presumably to deliver the last rights of the Church..." He paused, seemed to take an audible breath, and then with a cracking voice. "I have just received the official word, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States of America, has died?"
The report went on, more items turned from rumor to fact or were disproven and discarded, more conjecture as to who and why, news of a manhunt. On and on the radio went as we drove through Xenia and then west on Rt. 35, before branching off and heading south toward Wilmington Pike and my home in Kettering.
The driver broke the silence, "How do I get to your house?"
I muttered a few directions, my mind swirling with events, suddenly realizing how much energy I had put into hoping against Kennedy's death. I was tired and in despair.
We sat in the living room that evening. We ate sandwiches so that Mom could join us. Still pictures were beginning to be released, there on the plane, hair slicked back, stood a slightly rumpled Lyndon Johnson, hand raised in the air, on his left a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy, still dressed in her blood stained pink wool suit, looks on as the Vice President takes the oath of office from Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, a long time friend of Johnson's.
Cameras at Andrews Air Force Base, located the 707 as it approached, landed and rolled to a stop. Raw emotions swept through me as the flag draped coffin was unloaded and received by the waiting honor guard, as Jackie, still in the bloody pink suit, and the new President emerged from the plane. What was death? Was there an afterlife? What would justice look like in such a case? My mind swirled to comprehend questions I was unprepared to answer.
In between continuous news from Washington and Dallas- where police had captured a man they believed to be the primary assassin- the rest of the nation stumbled to figure out how to honor the dead President. All three networks cancelled their Friday shows. The Ohio State - Michigan game was postponed and would be played the next Saturday in Ann Arbor. Schools, businesses, institutions all announced a period of mourning that would last until after the funeral on Monday. If something didn't need to be opened, it voluntarily closed its doors.
Pete Rozelle, the man most credited with pro football's rise to dominate the American sport scene, saw an opportunity, "I believe," he claimed with just a whiff of pompous clairvoyance, "that President Kennedy would want us to play." Football, he seemed to be saying, was bigger than the presidency, bigger than life and death and thanks to the NFL we could collectively grieve by watching football.
That same, life-must-go-on philosophy certainly grabbed me. The story from Andrews barely finished, I hopped in my car and headed over to the house of my girlfriend. Her mom retired early and we headed for the basement, pretending to watch the news, hoping the newsmen's voices would cover our heavy breathing. Huddling beneath a quilt, we managed to lock out the world until the national anthem ended and the screen turned to snow.
I awoke the next morning, grabbed a plate of scrambled eggs and joined Dad by the TV. I had no more than sat down than it was announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, the believed assassin, was being transferred from one jail to another. As my dad and I watched, a man stepped out of the crowd and shot Oswald. Live and on TV. The shock from this second shooting was almost as palpable as had been the radio news of the assassination. Was this not a nation of laws? Were we not capable of keeping ourselves from shooting one another?
The rest of the day dissolved into endless questions streaming from televisions, radios and newspapers. There was no game to anxiously await. All the resources Americans use to amuse, enlighten, excite and anesthetize themselves seemed absent. A national two-day comma took over. When bored, we walked about and found others to talk to. "How did you find out?" began conversations. "Was it just Oswald?" continued the talk. "Why did he go to Dallas, of all places?" frequently ended them. There was no escaping the event, save to turn off the source and go look for a place to be alone. For me, that meant back to the girlfriend's basement and under the quilt.
The NFL played on Sunday. I can't remember if I watched, if the network carried the games, not even what I thought of Rozelle's decision.
Lyndon Johnson was busy all three days playing with smoke and mirrors, dismantling one administration while putting another together and all the while appearing to be in shock and mourning. He spoke to reassure the citizens, and each time he did his Texas twang sent sensations through my teeth. Gone was the Bostonian speech, rich in its own geographical peculiarities, we had come to love.
Monday arrived bright and cold. A heavy frost coated the grass and the roofs of neighboring houses. This was the morning the nation was dreading. The awful events of Friday, the arrival of the casket at Andrews, the shooting of Oswald and the long lines of mourners parading, seemingly ceaselessly as the body lie in state under the Capitol Dome were one thing, but committing the remains to the eternity of earth would be the final assurance that none of this was a nightmare. It had happened.
We were finishing our coffee, eyes unflinchingly fixed on the TV as the caisson reached the steps. Behind the carriage, Black Jack, a black stallion, glistened in the morning sun, pranced and shook his head as if eager to take his master for a gallop. A close up revealed the boots turned backward in the stirrups. The honor guard in dress blues, bayonets fixed, followed and then the army band with muffled drums shrouded in black cloth. Down the steps came the casket, borne by soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, past dignitaries, statesmen, ambassadors, senators, representatives and judges until at last they carried their burden past the widow, now in black, and her two young children, the little boy who bore his father's name giving a salute, a recognition well beyond his years of the solemnity of the moment.
I heard a something, a half caught breath, and turned and for the first time in my life I saw my father cry. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he bit his lip for relief. My mom patted his shoulder and wiped her own tears. I was simply numb, still in that time of life where we believe ourselves to be immortal and thus struggle to take meaning from death.
When I think back on those days I am amazed at how quickly the events and details fall into place, that I was in front of the Varsity Club, that it was a green '57 Plymouth, that the driver was the one who broke the news, that we were just nearing Wilberforce when his death was announced, that the game with Michigan was postponed to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that Mike Mansfield was the Speaker of the House and that I had never before seen my father cry.
It took weeks for the meaning of the assassination to sink in. I hadn't been a JFK fan until I heard him speak at Wittenberg in October of 1960. Something in his words that day, "We can do better... if we can send our young men to fight other nations, why can't we send our youth to help them? ...this nation has an obligation to lead..." had captured my imagination and I found myself drifting away from my father's Republican status quo contentment.
In his thousand days I joined many of my peers at Ohio State in thinking about public service, of thinking about segregation, poverty and how we would go about making the world better. The irony that his crowning achievement was a nuclear standoff in Cuban waters, and that for all his elegant words, it was the bumbling, conniving Johnson who held the political clout to turn the words to legislation, has never left me.
Two years later, at twilight on a Pennsylvania hilltop, caked in mud, standing in wet combat boots, exhausted from a five-day training exercise, I would see that handsome, youthful face, on a screen stretched between two trees, and hear that commanding voice "Let the word go forth... that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans... Let every nation know... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
For a second I thought, that's my President, he's speaking to me and now I know why I'm here and then reality set in and I realized that he was gone forever, lost to the ages, and at last I cried for the loss.
It was cold, more damp than cold really, and the brisk wind that seemed to always be sweeping across Columbus in November tore into my ski jacket. Twenty years old and a college student, I would rather shiver than don a hat, scarf and gloves. I stood in front of the Varsity Club on Lane Avenue, suitcase by my side, and stuck out my thumb. It was the weekend of the Ohio State – Michigan game, The Game, and if I could hitch a ride to Dayton I’d be able to watch the activities from Ann Arbor on a color TV and drink free beer from my parent’s refrigerator.
Luck! A fuzzy, dark green '57 Plymouth two-door, slowed and then stopped in front of me. An Ohio State sweatshirt clad kid jumped out, threw the seatback forward, and gestured to get in. I threw my suitcase across the back seat and settled in. As we pulled away from the curb, the driver, another OSU student, turned his head. "Someone took a shot at the President."
It took a second for the news to settle into a coherent thought in my mind. We crossed the Olentangy, driving by the Ag School fields, and the radio was filled with anxious voices, reporters in Washington and Dallas trying to put the pieces together. A parade, an open car, bright, clear day, a warm, welcoming crowd, a bend in the route, shots -- no one seemed to able to pin down numbers -- One? Two? Three? More? And where from? Two reporters weren't sure, but they saw police charging into a building, some kind of warehouse for Texas schools.
Walter Cronkite settled in, the network informed us that all programming had been cancelled, this would be a simulcast, radio and TV, for the CBS system. The veteran reporter instinctively went about his business, pulling together what was known: that the President had been shot at, that the limousine had taken off for Parklands Hospital, that he had been taken into the trauma room. He paused, and then began to field reports and send out requests for information to the news team over the air.
Rumors ran wild as the Plymouth headed along route 142 outside London, Ohio: he was wounded, he was dead, Vice President Johnson had entered the hospital with his hand over his heart because he'd had a heart attack, it was the KKK, it was Cuba, it was the Mafia, it was one man, it was a team.
I listened, not realizing that I was hearing a news story being put together in the open, on the fly. Allowed to eavesdrop as leads were filtered, crosschecked, verified or left hanging, I felt as if I were watching a tennis match, the play going back and forth.
New questions were examined: How good was the hospital? Who would be the surgeons? Would the Vice President take over temporarily? The last question took them back to the rumor that Johnson had suffered a heart attack. That would leave Mike Mansfield, the Speaker of the House, next in line in the order of succession. In a day when politicians were allowed something of a private life, the public did not know that Mansfield had a serious problem with the bottle, but something in the tone of the reporter's voices, a verbal rolling of the eyes, gave me the idea that Mansfield was not the person they would pick in such a crisis.
We sat in silence, three college students riding across the state together, not knowing each other's politics, majors, hometowns, not even each other's names. We were too absorbed in the moment to go through any of the introductory ritual. Mute, concentrating, our thoughts locked inside us and we pondered what all of this looked like.
Hope lingered: In the car, in the voices of the reporters, and as I would later find when sharing my story of this day, in the hearts of most Americans. Hope that Kennedy was only slightly wounded, that he was still alive, and that his injuries would not take from us that engaging smile, that resolute voice, that sense that a young, brave, strong father was in charge of our country.
It was just outside of Wilberforce, a few minutes before one, when Cronkite's voice tightened, "the Bishop of Dallas, Reverend Thomas Gorman, has arrived at the hospital, presumably to deliver the last rights of the Church..." He paused, seemed to take an audible breath, and then with a cracking voice. "I have just received the official word, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States of America, has died?"
The report went on, more items turned from rumor to fact or were disproven and discarded, more conjecture as to who and why, news of a manhunt. On and on the radio went as we drove through Xenia and then west on Rt. 35, before branching off and heading south toward Wilmington Pike and my home in Kettering.
The driver broke the silence, "How do I get to your house?"
I muttered a few directions, my mind swirling with events, suddenly realizing how much energy I had put into hoping against Kennedy's death. I was tired and in despair.
We sat in the living room that evening. We ate sandwiches so that Mom could join us. Still pictures were beginning to be released, there on the plane, hair slicked back, stood a slightly rumpled Lyndon Johnson, hand raised in the air, on his left a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy, still dressed in her blood stained pink wool suit, looks on as the Vice President takes the oath of office from Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, a long time friend of Johnson's.
Cameras at Andrews Air Force Base, located the 707 as it approached, landed and rolled to a stop. Raw emotions swept through me as the flag draped coffin was unloaded and received by the waiting honor guard, as Jackie, still in the bloody pink suit, and the new President emerged from the plane. What was death? Was there an afterlife? What would justice look like in such a case? My mind swirled to comprehend questions I was unprepared to answer.
In between continuous news from Washington and Dallas- where police had captured a man they believed to be the primary assassin- the rest of the nation stumbled to figure out how to honor the dead President. All three networks cancelled their Friday shows. The Ohio State - Michigan game was postponed and would be played the next Saturday in Ann Arbor. Schools, businesses, institutions all announced a period of mourning that would last until after the funeral on Monday. If something didn't need to be opened, it voluntarily closed its doors.
Pete Rozelle, the man most credited with pro football's rise to dominate the American sport scene, saw an opportunity, "I believe," he claimed with just a whiff of pompous clairvoyance, "that President Kennedy would want us to play." Football, he seemed to be saying, was bigger than the presidency, bigger than life and death and thanks to the NFL we could collectively grieve by watching football.
That same, life-must-go-on philosophy certainly grabbed me. The story from Andrews barely finished, I hopped in my car and headed over to the house of my girlfriend. Her mom retired early and we headed for the basement, pretending to watch the news, hoping the newsmen's voices would cover our heavy breathing. Huddling beneath a quilt, we managed to lock out the world until the national anthem ended and the screen turned to snow.
I awoke the next morning, grabbed a plate of scrambled eggs and joined Dad by the TV. I had no more than sat down than it was announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, the believed assassin, was being transferred from one jail to another. As my dad and I watched, a man stepped out of the crowd and shot Oswald. Live and on TV. The shock from this second shooting was almost as palpable as had been the radio news of the assassination. Was this not a nation of laws? Were we not capable of keeping ourselves from shooting one another?
The rest of the day dissolved into endless questions streaming from televisions, radios and newspapers. There was no game to anxiously await. All the resources Americans use to amuse, enlighten, excite and anesthetize themselves seemed absent. A national two-day comma took over. When bored, we walked about and found others to talk to. "How did you find out?" began conversations. "Was it just Oswald?" continued the talk. "Why did he go to Dallas, of all places?" frequently ended them. There was no escaping the event, save to turn off the source and go look for a place to be alone. For me, that meant back to the girlfriend's basement and under the quilt.
The NFL played on Sunday. I can't remember if I watched, if the network carried the games, not even what I thought of Rozelle's decision.
Lyndon Johnson was busy all three days playing with smoke and mirrors, dismantling one administration while putting another together and all the while appearing to be in shock and mourning. He spoke to reassure the citizens, and each time he did his Texas twang sent sensations through my teeth. Gone was the Bostonian speech, rich in its own geographical peculiarities, we had come to love.
Monday arrived bright and cold. A heavy frost coated the grass and the roofs of neighboring houses. This was the morning the nation was dreading. The awful events of Friday, the arrival of the casket at Andrews, the shooting of Oswald and the long lines of mourners parading, seemingly ceaselessly as the body lie in state under the Capitol Dome were one thing, but committing the remains to the eternity of earth would be the final assurance that none of this was a nightmare. It had happened.
We were finishing our coffee, eyes unflinchingly fixed on the TV as the caisson reached the steps. Behind the carriage, Black Jack, a black stallion, glistened in the morning sun, pranced and shook his head as if eager to take his master for a gallop. A close up revealed the boots turned backward in the stirrups. The honor guard in dress blues, bayonets fixed, followed and then the army band with muffled drums shrouded in black cloth. Down the steps came the casket, borne by soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, past dignitaries, statesmen, ambassadors, senators, representatives and judges until at last they carried their burden past the widow, now in black, and her two young children, the little boy who bore his father's name giving a salute, a recognition well beyond his years of the solemnity of the moment.
I heard a something, a half caught breath, and turned and for the first time in my life I saw my father cry. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he bit his lip for relief. My mom patted his shoulder and wiped her own tears. I was simply numb, still in that time of life where we believe ourselves to be immortal and thus struggle to take meaning from death.
When I think back on those days I am amazed at how quickly the events and details fall into place, that I was in front of the Varsity Club, that it was a green '57 Plymouth, that the driver was the one who broke the news, that we were just nearing Wilberforce when his death was announced, that the game with Michigan was postponed to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that Mike Mansfield was the Speaker of the House and that I had never before seen my father cry.
It took weeks for the meaning of the assassination to sink in. I hadn't been a JFK fan until I heard him speak at Wittenberg in October of 1960. Something in his words that day, "We can do better... if we can send our young men to fight other nations, why can't we send our youth to help them? ...this nation has an obligation to lead..." had captured my imagination and I found myself drifting away from my father's Republican status quo contentment.
In his thousand days I joined many of my peers at Ohio State in thinking about public service, of thinking about segregation, poverty and how we would go about making the world better. The irony that his crowning achievement was a nuclear standoff in Cuban waters, and that for all his elegant words, it was the bumbling, conniving Johnson who held the political clout to turn the words to legislation, has never left me.
Two years later, at twilight on a Pennsylvania hilltop, caked in mud, standing in wet combat boots, exhausted from a five-day training exercise, I would see that handsome, youthful face, on a screen stretched between two trees, and hear that commanding voice "Let the word go forth... that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans... Let every nation know... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
For a second I thought, that's my President, he's speaking to me and now I know why I'm here and then reality set in and I realized that he was gone forever, lost to the ages, and at last I cried for the loss.
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