Sixty years ago today JFK was gunned down in a Dallas motorcade.
The anniversary seems to have generated much less attention
than the 50th, as to be expected, but anecdotally it seems to be
slipping further from the forefront of the American consciousness with each
passing year.
Its grip on the American subconscious though – our disillusionment,
our distrust of the government and what it tells us – remains as sharp as ever.
Long ago, in 1983, the 20th anniversary garnered a tremendous
amount of media attention. It was, realistically, a turning point in the
retelling of Camelot. 20 years on, JFK would no longer be the young husband and
father people remembered. He would have been 66, had he escaped harm, and I
remember a magazine age-progressing his photo for shock value. If the post Dallas
America still longed for “what might have been,” they now also had to deal with
the idea that even in an ideal world, that utopian moment they longed for would
have already passed into memory.
Nerd that I was, I collected as many of the JFK magazines
and newspapers as I could, and along with some contemporary pieces sent to me
by Dave Powers, a JFK aide who then worked for the JFK library. I showed this
collection off to my very disinterested 4th grade classmates with
the permission of Sr. Dorothy.
(30 years hence, I offered to do the same for my kids
classroom on the 50th anniversary. Their middle school history teacher
demurred; by 2013, JFK apparently wasn’t worth taking up class time)
I imagine for the 75th anniversary the media attention will briefly spike, then subside until the centennial. In between, it was be an event recalled by fewer and fewer people.
None of that reduces the
shock, and horror, of a few minutes in Dallas in the fall of 1963.