You Remember Some Things

To quote Forrest Gump, "It's funny how you remember some things, but some things you can't".  Some things that you do remember are assassinations of prominent persons.  I'll probably remember the shooting in Tucson this past weekend and the circumstances surrounding it.

In October 1963, U. N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was jeered, spit upon, and hit by a sign during  a United Nations Day speech in Dallas, Texas.  A few weeks later, President Kennedy visited Dallas in an attempt to improve his popularity in the state.

I was at UCLA at the time, and we wondered how the President would be received in Dallas.  At about 9:30 am, I was listening to a lecture in American Literature on "The Great Gatsby".  The discussion turned to the sacrifices that persons in public office sometimes make, at great cost to themselves and their families.   When I got back to my fraternity house at 10:00 am, Lowell Hahn came in and said, "Did you hear the news. Kennedy's been shot".  We didn't believe him; it was Lowell's idea of a joke.  Then Al Bock came downstairs with a radio, and said, "He's dead".  The University closed; we were left to reflect.

On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, I was working at Southern Pacific Railroad at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco.  Sometime in the early afternoon, word came that Martin Luther King had been shot in Memphis.  A little later, someone said that a riot had started up Market Street and was moving towards us.  Most of the office left.  At 5:00 pm, however, I found it normal on the street.  I wondered if there would be trouble in Oakland, a largely black neighborhood that the bus passed through on my way home to Berkeley.  Again, nothing.

When I walked into my apartment, my roommate said, "He's dead".  I took the letter that I had written to my draft board two days earlier, expressing my opinion about the war and the draft, but which I had been undecided about posting, and put it in the mailbox.  A small protest.  The next day, of course, much larger protests took place across the country.

Two months later, June 4, 1968, I voted in the California Democratic primary between Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.  I had voted for McCarthy, but also supported Kennedy.  A year earlier, I had shook Kennedy's hand during a rally, but had been a little disappointed with his speech, in which he only promised "to do better" in Vietnam.  Gene McCarthy seemed  less equivocal.  I watched Kennedy give his victory speech in Los Angeles around midnight, got ready for bed, when shouting broke out, "The Senator has been shot".  For a few moments, it wasn't clear which Senator they meant.  Two days later, Robert Kennedy died in hospital.

As with the assassination attempt in Tucson, political feelings were running high in the 1960's.  Issues of civil rights, war, free speech, and role of government divided the U. S. left and right. These events tend to leave their marks on the public psyche.  In most instances, these and those which followed, the perpetrator was a young male, alienated, angry, confused, lashing out against his circumstances. Unfortunately, he may sometimes have been set off by the rhetoric and bombast of others.  You wonder if we ever move forward.