POST BEGUN 0802HRS GMT SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2025

 

62 years. I can still smell the unique classroom 'fragrance' of Elmer's Glue and Catholic Press textbook binding. 

 

We'd just come back in from recess, lunch was at least an hour off so we were getting our math books out. 

 

The door opened, I can still see the young novitiate enter Sr Mary Aloysius second grade classroom and hurry to Sister's desk to lean down to Sister's ear. It has been 62 years but I can still hear Sister's gasp over the soft sobs of the novitiate and I can still hear the shock and panic in Sister's voice as she told us to take out our Rosaries and go to our knees to pray God spared the life of President Kennedy.

 

We were in the second decade of that Rosary when Mother Superior pulled open the classroom door to bark into the room 'All pupils to the church quick and orderly!' 

 

Monseigneur English (62 years on and I still remember his name, his appearance, his voice) finally mounted the lectern to tell us we should now pray for the repose of President Kennedy's soul, for the strength and comfort of his widow and children, and most fervently for the USA. The older kids (the school went from first through 9th grade) whispered and were overheard, the word President Kennedy had died went through the large church like a summer wildfire out on the pine forests near Big Bear.

 

Soon nuns were fetching children, in family groups, from the pews, releasing us to parents or high school aged siblings (my older sister, a high school senior slated to be entering the convent after graduation, collected my eighth grade brother, first grade sister, and second grade me and then waited for our ride back out to the ranch in front of the church). 

 

Nothing was ever the same again after that day when President Kennedy was murdered, nothing. For five days solid, 24 hours a day, the only thing on television and radio was coverage of the horror unfolding. We saw it all including some of it live (Oswald's death, President Kennedy lying in State then the funeral, Walter Cronkite breaking into tears not once but several times over the next week). Our parents, hell every adult in our lives, everyone changed and the truth is in a way none of us children were able to articulate for decades, we changed forever. 

 

For many of us (although not me as sadly my family had endured losses and I'd been to family funerals), the televised funeral was the first time we'd ever seen children our age publicly mourn such a tragic loss. I don't even need to close my eyes to see little John-John saluting JFK's coffin, and I can still see Caroline holding her mother's hand as they came down the steps. She is so close to my age (only a year younger) that I grieved for her losing her father, at the time (and ever since) I couldn't help feeling deeply for a girl my age who'd lost her dad so very young.

 

As always this past 62 years, on 22nd November it is Caroline I think of, especially now her wee brother has been gone (16th July 1999), but even when he was still alive it was Caroline I prayed for on the 22nd of November.  I thought of her every year, I do this year, and I will continue to do so. I was 28yo when my dad passed away and I still feel it every year (21st December 1985) and honestly I know a loss like that (a much loved parent) is simply not something you get over or get past. If you're strong enough you get through it but it leaves a mark that never goes away. 

 

Posted 0842hrs Saturday 22nd November 2025