Shot heard round the world
It was a weekend horror, of grief, of madness.
Within minutes of three shots ringing out over a motorcade in
Dallas, the world was forever changed. Our vaunted civilization was
suddenly fragile and we were thrust back a thousand centuries into
a jungle through which Death strode, unopposed and terrible.
Everyone remembered exactly what he had been doing when
catastrophe fell. People stood stunned in the streets trying to
comprehend the incomprehensible. Many tried to find refuge for
their stricken spirits in churches, even more turned to the
television or radio. It was as if by studying and poring over every
detail we could somehow negate the deed. Any bit of news attached
to it was eagerly seized and studied as if by putting it all
together we could return a few hours earlier to a pleasant November
day.
Shot heard round the world
It was a weekend horror, of grief, of madness.
Within minutes of three shots ringing out over a motorcade in Dallas, the world was forever changed. Our vaunted civilization was suddenly fragile and we were thrust back a thousand centuries into a jungle through which Death strode, unopposed and terrible.
Everyone remembered exactly what he had been doing when catastrophe fell. People stood stunned in the streets trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Many tried to find refuge for their stricken spirits in churches, even more turned to the television or radio. It was as if by studying and poring over every detail we could somehow negate the deed. Any bit of news attached to it was eagerly seized and studied as if by putting it all together we could return a few hours earlier to a pleasant November day.
Then the word of the death came from the hospital. Veteran newsmen who had witnessed innumerable deaths in wartime and had toured atrocity camps found it difficult to control their voices in putting words to the account.
Camelot had fallen and all of the brightness and gaiety that had illuminated its halls were quenched. Throughout that dismal afternoon and evening, the realization of the act hit us again and again like waves rolling ceaselessly upon a shattered ship.
New images flickered unto the screen, then gave way to others. The rage at the deed built inside everyone, as did the unmitigated grief that seemed as though it would last forever.
Messages of consolation poured in from throughout the globe and the world’s leaders expressed their grief for the young statesman and for the nation. Within hours of the death, many of them were flying to the United States to attend his funeral.
We watched as the widow still wearing her bloodstained dress stood next to her husband’s successor as he took the oath of office on Air Force One
On the following day most of America saw a second madman murder the first one on television. It was as though a newsreel had slipped its sockets and whirred crazily ahead to show horror after horror to an incredulous world.
We saw people stream by the coffin, each feeling a deep sorrow as though a family member had died. In the funeral procession, a puzzled boy watched and wondered where his father was, as the caisson carrying the casket rolled by. The riderless horse with boots thrust backwards in the stirrups bucked and plunged as though it harbored a spirit that could not be broken, even in death.
We knew then how Lincoln’s America had felt. If the poet Edwin Markham had lived at a later time he might have written of John F. Kennedy as he did of Abraham Lincoln:
“…And when he fell in whirlwind,
He went down as when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.”
