So, this week I embarked on a task of asking all of my patients >50 years old what they remembered from the Kennedy assassination. I am a sucker for personal portrayal of history and it seemed like this week everyone was talking about the 50 year anniversary. Here are some of the most interesting stories I heard this week:
-"I was an 18 year old and the class president of my senior class. The principal tasked me to go to each of the classrooms to tell each teacher of Kennedy's death. At least half of those teachers cried"
-"I was 4 and I just remember my mom crying. It seemed the nation was crying"
-"Oh yes, I remember. It was horrible. It was the unthinkable. The unimaginable. And now we were stuck with LBJ. We had lost our hope. And Jackie. Poor Jackie. She truly lived up to all of our expectations. They were our Royal Family" -87 year old female
-"All I could think about was if Kennedy was dead, we were likely going to be taken over by the Russians"
-"I was living in NYC at the time, as a stock exchange currier. The news spread like wild fire and they closed trading for the day. They were terrified the market would crash as a result. It really shut down the city in a way I've never seen. No one was on the street. The city was mourning" -90 year old female
"I was 20 and remember it well. In college in California. Class had just ended or something and I was passing through the student union building and saw masses of people crowed around the TV. I stopped to check it out and couldn't believe my eyes"
"I was 18 at the time, living in Fort Worth. All I remember thinking is, we are going to go to war because of this. Sure enough, Vietnam came just a few years later" 78 year old patient, veteran of Vietnam
The stories go on. I tried to ask the questions in a way that I could spark personal memory versus memories clouded by information since learned. I will say it was a really neat experience for me and a week I won't easily forget.
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