John F. Kennedy

The first truly memorable president from childhood was John F. Kennedy.  Dwight Eisenhower was president when I was born and through those first school years, but other than looking at his bland and smiling picture in our classroom on a daily basis, we were clueless about him, except that he had big fish-like lips and looked like someone’s benevolent grandfather. 

Ike was actually “up there”, but we were far too young to appreciate him.  He was the hero of many of our parents.  Ike was the most illustrious military commander of WW2, including Operation Overlord and the Normandy Invasion.  During his presidency, he was responsible for the building of our national highway infrastructure, which cut road trips in half as potholed and miserable state roads were replaced with new federally funded highways.  Ike had some roots in San Antonio too.  As a young officer, he was stationed at Fort Sam Houston and met wife Mamie there too, whose well-off family summered in an impressive columned house on McCullough Avenue. 

But it was John F. Kennedy who caught all of our attention when he was elected in 1960.  This was far before all of the dark corners of his presidency were gradually revealed.  We children too fell victim to his charisma, especially his lovely family and children.  There were coloring books about Caroline Kennedy and her princess existence in the White House.  Who else got to keep a pony at the White House and ride it whenever she wanted?  My thoroughly Baptist parents did not care for the Catholic Kennedys, but that didn’t stop us from poring over every word that was written about them in our Weekly Readers.  They ranked up there with the astronauts John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Eugene Cerna. 

 

The assassination was an experience that was seared into our generation.  John F. Kennedy and Jackie had been to San Antonio (and Houston) just a few days before Dallas and many classmates (especially the Catholics) had been taken out of school so that they could see the local motorcade, or watch him fly into the airport.  Several even got to shake his hand and vowed they would never wash the hand that had touched JFK.  They were over the moon.  When the shooting actually occurred, we were all at recess.  We had lined up to come in, and when we entered the classroom, TVs had been rolled into the classrooms and they were on.  The TVs were NEVER on (except for Senorita Barrera).  As we sat at our desks, the drama unfolded.  It was about 12:15 or so.  He was still alive, but in the Parkland Hospital.  Our teachers were absolutely silent, gathered in groups in front of the TV. We sat ignored and unattended at our desks.   I remember praying that he would live.  That was what you did, right?  But I also knew in my heart that praying would be useless.   When his death was announced a few minutes later, a black cloud descended on us all and did not fade for a long time.  The TVs were turned off.  Stunned, we somehow muddled through the rest of the afternoon.  We did school work.  No one offered us a word or comfort to help us come to terms with our shock and grief.  What did we need that for?  We would get over it.   Get out your books.  There’s work to be done.  My walk back to my father’s barber shop was slow and thoughtful.  He was waiting for me outside, unaware that I already knew everything.  When I saw him, I cried for the first time.  Over those dreadful next few days, I found my mother crying also.  My mother never cried.  She was a strong woman, but the horrors of November 23^rd, and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on national television a few days later did her in. 

It did all of us in.

For the next few months, the news media was full of the tall, lanky Texan who found himself thrust unexpectedly into the U.S. presidency.  Lyndon B. Johnson, nicknamed “Colonel Cornpone” by Jackie Kennedy, was a consummate politician and wheeler-dealer,  and probably one of the most powerful and effective presidents who ever sat the White House.  LBJ was the president who pushed Kennedy’s civil rights bill on down the throats of Congress and instituted social reforms such as medicare that would sweep the nation.  It was a shame that he was mostly unappreciated during his time.  A lot of that had to do with the fact that he was thrust into the shoes of John F. Kennedy.  No two presidents could have been less similar.  A former school teacher who appeared out of nowhere to enter the Texas and national political scene, he will be forever remembered as the president who allowed the Vietnam War to become a conflagration that raged out of control all through the 60s, and it would crush both the nation and him.  The pity of it was that he had not even started the Vietnam War.  For us, he was always a Texan, a hill country boy and one of us.  LBJ was loud, vulgar and often crude, but he was a force of nature.

He remained our president until high school.