Empathy. Pt. 1 (An Account of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy)

The year was 1961 and I was in the 6^th grade. Mr. Ball, our teacher, was apparently more civic-minded than most, with the emphasis on the plural, (civics) as he had brought in a b&w television from home and set it on his desk. At the time there was no such thing as cable, and the only channels available were 8 (NBC), 10 (ABC) and 13 (CBS).

Having set the television down, Mr. Ball proceeded to spread the ‘rabbit ears’ antenna, and clicked the knob. After a few seconds of black and white fuzz a live feed from Washington D.C. lit up the screen. Thousands of people filled up the parade route, and a long, black limosine drove slowly past the site of the film camera. A middle-aged man and younger woman who looked surprisingly like the sitcom characters, Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) sat in the back seat. Of course, this nation had just elected a new president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and he and Jacqueline were passing by on their way to assuming the proverbial seats of the outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, and his wife, Mamie Eisenhower. 

The twenty-five or thirty students in our 6th grade class sat at rapt attention, as the Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in the 35th President of the United States. Either just before or just after the swearing in ceremony, the time element escapes me now, Robert Frost, the aging, white-haired poet, stepped to the podium to read one of his well-known poems.

As Frost stood to recite “The Gift Outright” the wind and the bright reflection of sunlight off the new fallen snow made reading impossible. He was able, however, to recite the poem from memory. For whatever reason, I recall the old man’s valiant rendition of his poem more clearly than the highlight of that momentous occasion; JFK’s inaugural address, and its two most memorable lines, 

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Fast forward 2 ½ years, and I found myself just short of half way through the 9^th grade. 

November 22^nd, 1963

 ‘a day,’ as my 6^th cousin, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt might have said,

…“which will live in infamy.”

I 'laid out' sick that day; the only sick day I would take during my entire 9th year of school. I cannot account for it. As I reflect on it now, it seems almost personally prophetic on my part that I'd chosen this day of all days to remain home.

As I lay in our television room watching “As the World Turns,” just prior to the 2 PM (EST) hour, an alert icon of some sort came up on the screen. In those days, those bulky old television cameras had to be warmed up for several minutes; prior to being used. And thus, I heard him before I saw him. Walter Cronkite, the mainstay of the CBS Evening News broadcast. 

“News Bulletin. President Kennedy has been shot.”

Eight minutes later, Mr. Cronkite’s image joined his disembodied voice. During those eight minutes, (the amount of time required for a beam of light to travel from the sun to the earth) live television was little more than a radio broadcast. However, CBS had beaten NBC ‘to the punch’ by about 40 seconds, and was credited with the ‘news scoop’ of the century. From that time forward the major networks learned their lesson, and had learned it well. They would always have a couple of live television cameras warmed up and ready to broadcast.

(To be continued)


  By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 40. Copyright pending

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