Dark Day

This is the 50th Anniversary of the assasination of President John F. Kennedy.

Back in January of this calendar year, while enroute to Austin, TX, for the AMS meeting, I passed by the Ground Zero of that terrible day.  After pulling out of Dallas Union Station, the train I was on traveled about 1/2 mile north, and passed within full view of Dealey Plaza and the Texas Schoolbook Depository.  The train was on tracks that cross above the roadway that leads from Dealey Plaza, which President Kennedy's motorcade sped on after the fatal shots took their hit.

(The Texas School Book Depository is the orangish-colored building in the left middle part of this photo.  The roadway is just below and to the right of it.  The train stopped here for a few minutes, enough time for me to get pictures from the Observation/Lounge car.  Later in the trip, I looked at an exhibit on this day at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.  I saw the missal he placed his hand on when he took the Oath of Office on display there.)

Not too long after my trip to Texas, I was visiting with the Ruggabers.  During the course of our time together, our conversation turned to this day.  They were both just a little bit younger than me on that day.  They mentioned that I only live in the hereafter of that day.

I indeed am humbled on this occasion recognizing that my life is well-removed from the tragedy of that day.  I was born nearly 30 years after a day that devastated the people of the United States.  I am among a large group of US Americans alive today who only perceive November 22, 1963, as a day of momentous historic significance.  Though through experiences like on the aforementioned trip, I have brought myself into contact with pieces of that day, I have no conception of the raw emotions people felt that day.  Even my parents were little children on that day.  The big question of that persists from that day was, "Where were you [when you first heard of President Kennedy's death]?" 

"Where were you?"  That is a question I can clearly answer in regards to September 11, 2001.  I can very clearly recount everything that happened that day, and where I was when I learned what had happened.  This awful day seared into my memory surely shapes how I perceive the world I have grown up in.  But more than a decade later, there are so many young Americans who don't have such vivid memories of that day, including many who were alive that day, but were too young to remember much, even being only a few years younger than me.  And we're not too far away from having an entire generation of Americans who weren't even alive on that day.

In regards to September 11, 2001, like those alive on November 22, 1963, I am a witness to a day that had a grave effect on the course of the history that followed.  I, like them, grapple with the terrible things I observed, as I seek to make sense of evil in the world, and my place in that world.