Fifty years ago, I was an eighteen year old freshman at State College of Iowa, soon to become the University of Northern Iowa.  At noon on Friday, November 22, I had eaten lunch at the cafeteria in the Union, returned to the dorm to pick up my books, and headed to my 1 o'clock Intro to Lit class, taught by Loren Taylor, my favorite professor in my three years at SCI.  Dormitories were different in those days.  I had two roommates in a room designed for two students.  There were no mini-fridges or phones or televisions in the room.  There was one common room per floor with a television, but it was rarely used during the day.  As I walked across campus to the classroom, there seemed to be fewer students than usual, but it was Friday afternoon, so the absence could be dismissed as students leaving early for the weekend.

When I got to the classroom, perhaps half the students were there.  A few of them said that President Kennedy had been shot, but that seemed unthinkable and no one had much information.  We waited for 15 minutes to see if Prof. Taylor would show up and then left the classroom.  In the dorm, everyone was in the common room.  Walter Cronkite had announced the President's death at 1 p.m.  For the rest of the day, the room was packed as we tried to fathom what had happened.  South American dictators were assassinated, not American Presidents.  The idea that RFK, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X would also be killed in the next few years couldn't have occurred to us. 

Three years earlier, I had been an eager volunteer in Kennedy's campaign.  The night of his nomination (on my birthday in my time zone), my parents let me stay up late.  Nerd (a word that didn't exist then) that I was (am?), I had made a giant chart of all the states, the number of their votes, the possible nominees.  I dutifully filled out all the little squares until Kennedy finally secured the nomination.  I went door-to-door in my Republican home town passing out brochures.  Although I've always portrayed Story City as fairly liberal, there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment.  The pastor of the largest Lutheran church in urging his parishioners to vote against Kennedy had announced from the pulpit that he would rather his daughter marry a Communist than a Catholic.  (There was some backlash against that statement.)

I don't remember much about the weekend following the assassination--what activities went on as scheduled, which were cancelled.  The common room in Baker Hall, my dorm, was always packed, the black-and-white TV always on, grief, anger, and incomprehension mingled.


Thanksgiving Tip:  Don't forget to spatchcock your turkey.