Hard to believe tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most despicable acts in our known history.
Walking down the aisle on the third floor of the Sussman & Co textile warehouse in the riverfront district of Cincinnati when the news came over the always-playing radio, I stopped and felt frozen to the floor. Nothing in my innocent eighteen years of life had so hammered my conciousness of the world outside. Then I was shaken almost as severely when a short time later, while glued to television news for the weekend, I was so suddenly worldly-wise as to predict the demise of one Lee Harvey Oswald. It's true, and so profoundly recalled still today, that I told my housemate a day before Jack Ruby appeared out of the crowd at police headquarters, that I didn't think Oswald would live to stand trial. Then I watched his own shooting.
Innocence shattered!
Maybe finally, this year so long after the fact, I will ask my brother of his reaction on that day in '63. It was his twenty-first birthday. What a way to remember one's big, long-awaited milestone. How did he "celebrate?" What madness did he feel over the assassination? Was it similar to my own unbelieving state of almost blind rage and confusion?
Maybe this is the year I can finally ask him. But fifty years is not enough to ease the pain - it has been only more years and more pain to stand between the dates. I am in pain again with every view of the TV replays of that awful event.
My personal Camelot crumbled at the age of eighteen. Maybe Larry's two-and-one-half year head start on me had better prepared him for the horror. Maybe not.
None of us who were around then will ever forget it. It was a horror and I wonder if we will ever know the full truth. I've always thought it had all the earmarks of a mafia hit, including the silencing of Oswald.
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