Remembering JFK

I remember I was five months pregnant with my first child.  I was 19 years old.  Then I was so into sewing and knitting.  I had talked my mother into buying a knitting machine for me and I was bent on mastery of that machine.  It was around noon and it was hot in the apartment where we lived.  I had the radio on and that’s when I heard the news.  US President John F. Kennedy was dead, shot by an assassin in Dallas, Texas.  I remember gasping with shock.

 That was 50 years ago.  Just a few years after I graduated high school.  I remembered that during the US presidential elections one of my bestfriends, Nena, had a terrible crush on him.  She thought he was the handsomest man on earth.

 All these thoughts ran through my mind last Sunday when I decided to turn on the TV and caught a documentary titled Remembering Kennedy on the National Geographic Channel.  It has been 50 years, I whispered to myself.

 Remembering Kennedy was a documentary made from film clips taken 50 years ago that were found cleaned and edited together.  You could see what a handsome, young man Kennedy was.  For the first time since I had to agree with Nena.  And Jackie Kennedy was so young and pretty.  There was a sweet innocence around her then.  They were indeed a star couple, two beautiful people with two small adorable children who romped in the Oval Office with their dad, the President of the United States.

 I imagined the work that went into that documentary, the size of the research crew, the phone calls they made, the hunt for the needed footage, the cleaning, the transforming from 35 mm film to digital, the editing that went into it.  The hours spent scoring, finding the appropriate music, working on the soundtrack.  In the process I remembered the days when I was doing those things for advertising and yet the time it took.

 Remembering Kennedy showed Jack at a breakfast at Fort Worth, the last city he and Jackie visited before Dallas.  They gave him a cowboy hat and asked him to wear it.  He said, “You want to see me wearing it, come to the White House on Monday.  I will wear it then,” then he smiled his charming smile.

 People who were children then were interviewed.  You could see the light in their eyes, how they had aged but their memories remained vivid and alive.

 The documentary was followed by a feature film titled Killing Kennedy.  I decided to watch, too.  It was more focused on Lee Harvey Oswald, the Kennedy assassin and his Russian wife Marina, who hardly spoke English.  Parallel to that was the story of the Kennedy marriage.  I disliked the actors who played leading roles, not Jack, not Jackie but there was a scene where Bobby talks to Jack about having women and telling him to stop it before the media find out.

 This movie, which is supposed to be based on facts, also has a scene on President Kennedy’s severe back problems.  He wore a back brace all the time and was often plagued with serious back pains for which he received two injections.  His doctor in the movie made a point of saying he was done administering the cortisone and testosterone shots.  I remembered when I was 28 having terrible bout of back pain.  Being me, I did not go to the doctor until one day I could not even brush my hair from the pain.  My arm would not reach up.  Suddenly I realized that maybe that’s why Jack Kennedy did not wear the hat.  His back hurt too much for him to reach his head.  Only he wasn’t going to show it.

 And he received testosterone shots?  No wonder he was rumored to have so many women.  Testosterone is the hormone that ups your libido maybe beyond control.

 At the end of the movie Killing Kennedy they flash memorable shots of his life.  There were shots of him and tiny John-John walking on the beach.  These were the shots that made me cry.  I found myself sobbing with sympathy.  What a beautiful family they were but what a sorrowful life they led.  They had tragedy after tragedy that killed them one by one.  The President was assassinated.  His son, John, later died in a plane crash.  His wife, Jackie, died of cancer.  Now only Caroline is alive and her son, John, the grandson, who spoke on the 50th anniversary of his death.  God bless them and make them live long.

 As the words of Kennedy’s favorite song said:  Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.  At least I will never forget.

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