On the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I was ten years old and a student at Bailey Inglish Elementary School in Bonham, Texas, northeast of Dallas. I can’t remember how we were told the news, whether over the loudspeaker or by our teacher, but once we learned what had happened just 70 miles away, we each responded in our own way: silence, tears, words of disbelief. I felt both sad and distressed. How terrible that President Kennedy had been shot in our state. How awful that we had not been able to protect him.

School was dismissed early and I walked the five blocks home. Once there, I heard the sound of the television upstairs in my parents’ room, so I headed up there to find my father sitting in his recliner, tears streaming down his face. I was not surprised by his reaction. I felt like crying, too. I hugged Daddy, then settled on the floor to watch the news coverage.

Seeing Walter Cronkite get emotional also had an impact on me. I wasn’t used to someone like him showing his emotions on television. But there he was, his voice cracking and his eyes so teary that he had to take his glasses off to wipe them with his handkerchief. Over the next few hours, all of our immediate family gathered in that room to listen to Cronkite’s sober voice as he chronicled what had happened that day in Dallas, and how that necessitated the swearing in of a new president. I felt sad for Lyndon Johnson having to take over the presidency like that.  I knew he wanted to one day be president, but not like that.  He and Ladybird.  They looked distressed, just like all of us.

On that day, I was aware that life had shifted in a monumentous way. John F. Kennedy, the man who had said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” was gone, and with him at least some of my childhood innocence. I didn’t know then that over the next decade, there would be a series of assassinations that would bring our country to its knees. I only knew that our coun try