22nd November 1963

For those of us of a certain age events in Dallas sixty years ago today are marked indelibly on our memories. Time may have embellished or diminished those memories but those of us who experienced that moment in history can all remember where we were, who we were with and what we were doing. Not for at least another generation would there be such a scarring of both individual and collective memories as when the Twin Towers and The Pentagon were attacked on 11th September 2001.

As at 22nd November 1963 our family had been living in Britain for five or six weeks having moved from Canada. The move came about a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Whether or not that crisis was a conscious part of my parents’ decision to move I shall never know but move we did. Mum, Dad, my two elder brothers, our family dog and me.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy seemed omnipresent appearing on our tv screens making his broadcasts to his nation and the rest of the world. I was only eight years old. I cannot remember his words but I knew from his tone and the solemnity that my parents and brothers watched and listened that something serious was happening.

The feared nuclear war was averted at the fifty ninth minute of the eleventh hour and the world began to breathe again. President Kennedy was a hero and even elevated to God like status by some. Compared to other Presidents his age gave him an immediate appeal to the young including my parents who would have been in their mid-thirties then and my brothers who were in their early teens. He was so influential that one of my brothers even tried to train his hair from a right to a left parting to emulate his hero.

It only took two or three well aimed bullets to bring all of that to an abrupt, bloody and brutal end.

I always stopped off at my grandparents after school where I would wait until my parents came and picked me up to take me home after they had finished work. They would be later than usual on Friday evenings as that was when they did the weekly shop.

At my grandparents I always had an English tea. That was bread, butter, jam and hot sweet tea out of bone China cups and saucers that my Uncle Patrick had brought back from one of his trips on the liners to the Far East. Being winter the weather was always cold and damp. Inside the house it was always warm, cosy, loving, happy and crowded with the bits and pieces my grandparents had collected over their fifty years of marriage.

After tea at the table my grandfather and I would watch Children’s Hour on the BBC while gran did the clearing up. On Fridays there was always a sort of children’s variety program, Crackerjack, which ended with silly games on the stage or a comedy play. Both of them would have grandfather and I in tears of laughter at the antics on screen. This was followed at six by the BBC News.

Don’t forget, this was in 1963. There was no twenty four hour rolling news coverage and no scrollers across the bottom of the screen that opened with “BREAKING”.

News in those days was, by comparison to today, strictly rationed. There were only two or three news bulletins during the day on TV provided by the BBC. There was a bit more on the radio, or “wireless” as my grandparents called it. And as for printed news there were the daily papers.

This Friday grandfather and I had laughed ourselves silly during the closing minutes of Crackerjack. The credits rolled. They were followed by the BBC News bulletin ahead of the news at six. The theme tune brought my grandmother in from the kitchen.

It was then that we heard the news about President Kennedy. This was followed by a trans-Atlantic link to Walter Cronkite in America. The ambient qualities of warmth and happiness that had in the sitting room only a few seconds ago had been obliterated just as quickly as one life had been in Dallas.

Grandmother was never one for swearing let out a “Yee Gods and little fishes” quickly followed by a “Jesus wept”. My grandfather whose tears of earlier laughter were still on his cheeks sat in his armchair transfixed to the screen while his cigar smouldered between his fingers.

The news bulletin showed grainy black and white images of the motorcade, the panic and the ensuing rush to the hospital.

My parents had been doing the weekly shop and came to pick me up. They had heard rumours while they were out but as far as they were concerned that was all they were, rumours. When they came into that warm room they saw the rumours had been true. Mum wept while Dad leaned against the door frame, brushed his fingers through his hair and breathlessly exclaimed “I can’t believe it. Why? So young. So young.”

My two elder brothers were at home. There, the only link with the outside world was a small transistor radio we had brought from Canada. Luxuries like a television, a proper radio and a telephone had to wait until other essentials for our new home had been bought. Knowing how much Kennedy meant to them both Dad drove home to bring them back to my grandparent’s house so they could watch the coverage.

We all watched the tv together. The grainy footage of the motorcade was replayed several times. Then it was confirmed that the President had died. It was my Dad who broke the shocked silence in the room. In his usual phlegmatic way he suggested it was time to go home. There was no point in staying.

It wasn’t going to change anything but everything had changed.