INFLECTION POINTS

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Inflection points –  events that not only change the course of  history but our collective psyche as well.  For many of us the first such event was the Kennedy assassination.  Prior to November 22, 1963, we were a nation energized by a young President with fresh ideas and plans – plans that were to be carried out by those “born of a new generation”.  When JFK was cut down it was shocking and unnerving.   And, one could argue, changed who we are.  There is a much-quoted conversation that took place after the assassination between journalist Mary McGrory and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor.  She lamented, “We’ll never laugh again.” He replied: “Mary, we’ll laugh again. It’s just that we’ll never be young again.” Many hopes and dreams died that day, as well as our collective feeling of security and our way of life.  As some sociologists have noted, November 22, 1963 was the end of the Fifties.

The assassination changed us in ways we could not have predicted at the time.  After that, Americans increasingly distrusted the Federal government (particularly after publication of the Warren Report) and yet, ironically, it also precipitated the largest expansion of government into our everyday lives.  We became embroiled in a war that many argue Kennedy would not have supported and our culture was flush with sex, drugs and a whole lot of anger.  Of course, there were good changes as well – civil rights and the women’s movement to name two – but certainly the innocence of the prior decade was gone forever.  It also marked the rise of television over newspapers.  Everyone was glued to black and white screens, watching events unfold for three days.  And why not?  It was compelling and the only way to stay abreast of changing events.  For me, I remember watching Lee Harvey Oswald being escorted down that fateful corridor in the Dallas police station when Jack Ruby shot him.  The experience of seeing someone killed in real time was jarring and disturbing.  Millions of people experienced that same shock.  Coupled with the assassination, how could we not be affected going forward?

The next time I saw anyone murdered was sixteen years ago today – September 11, 2001.  I flipped on CNBC that morning while getting ready for work.  The first plane had already hit Tower One and the hosts were speculating that it was a freak accident.  They mused about whether it would have an affect on the stock market since so many trading firms were in that building.  Then the unimaginable happened – the second plane hit.  I watched it in horror; this time it wasn’t one person I saw killed, but thousands.  Thanks to the 24 hour news cycle we were all witness to  explosions and fire and falling bodies over and over again for weeks.  I’m not sure we yet fully understand the toll that it took on us. Surely our national mindset was altered after watching all of the carnage and grief.  A grief that I believe is still evident after all these years.

To this day many of us tear up when recalling the image of the Twin Towers collapsing.  It remains hard to think about the people who perished that day – people who left home for work on a bright, blue-sky Tuesday morning and never returned.  The very notion of that was – is – frightening and causes us, once again, to question how secure we really are.  The fear of an imminent terror attack began impacting our everyday lives that day.  Suddenly we had to remove our shoes at the airport and limit the amount of shampoo we carry on a plane.   Socially, it brought on a lot of change too.  For the first few months after 9/11 it seemed we were able to put our differences aside, but that fraternity soon dissipated and has now devolved to a point where divisiveness rules the day .   In many ways, it has been the 60’s all over again with an extra dose of anger thrown in.

Which brings me to the unintended consequences of 9/11.  At some level we live with fear on a daily basis – fear that it could happen again to us or someone we love.  We  witness repeated terrorist attacks carried out all over the world that target ordinary people doing ordinary things.  I believe that the discord in our society is, in part, a manifestation of that fear.  I hope at some point we can recapture the unity we had in the aftermath of 9/11 and once again pull together.  Hurricane Harvey, as devastating and heart-breaking as it’s been, has shown me that people really can come together when fellow citizens are in need.  Sandra Bullock put it best when she Tweeted:  “There are no politics in 8 feet of water.  There are human beings in 8 feet of water.”  Amen.  Maybe this is a new beginning.  A new inflection point that causes us to remember that more often than not, most of the time we’re all just human beings in 8 feet of water.

That Day in Dallas

by Bob Sparrow

kennedy-in-carI had the pleasure a couple of weeks ago of attending the wedding of Reid Hendrix in Dallas, Texas; Reid is the son of good friends and former ‘hood residents, Cap & Sharon Hendrix, but no relation to Jimmy Hendrix. It is hard to mention the city of Dallas to people of my generation and not have them think of the Kennedy assassination. It was 53 years ago this week when we all not only remember the date of November 22, 1963, but we all know exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news – “President Kennedy has been shot”. Our generation saw Kennedy as a young, energetic, charismatic leader; who we were less concerned about his politics and policies than we were about the goings-on of Jack and Jackie in ‘Camelot’.

That day in Dallas was an historic day in many ways. To me ‘the 50s’ started in 1954 when Bill Haley and the Comets released Rock Around the Clock and ended with the Kennedy assassination. The age of innocence was gone as it was less than three months later when the Beatles made their first appearance in the United States and the psychedelic 60’s were underway.

book-depository

6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Although I have traveled to Dallas many times on business, I have never visited the site of the Kennedy assassination, the Texas School Book Depository, or as my colleagues called it, the Book Suppository (Ouch!), maybe that’s part of the reason it’s been renamed the Six Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Regardless of the name, they’ve done a great job of telling the complete, albeit controversial, story of the assassination and the strange series of events that followed. The self-guided tour through the museum exposes you to historic films, photographs, artifacts and interpretive displays that document the events surrounding the assassination. The museum presents the background of Lee Harvey Oswald and what might have been his motivation to shoot Kennedy, the story of Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald two days after Oswald shot Kennedy, and the Warren Commission’s report that unconvincingly concluded that Oswald acted alone.  It is a conspiracy theorist’s paradise.

The highlight of the tour for me was standing by the window on the 6th floor next to the site from where the gunshots came (one can not stand exactly where Oswald was as it is surrounded with Plexiglas). While standing there, one can see a video simulation of the Kennedy convertible turning the corner and coming right toward Oswald (presenting him with what seemed to be a much better target than the car later offered), then taking a left turn on Elm Street (Elm Street?!) where after Kennedy’s convertible moved laterally away from Oswald’s perch until it was about 100 yards away, at which time the shots were fired from the rear.

grassyknoll

 Me searching the ‘grassy knoll’

What about the ‘second gunman behind the grassy knoll’ you say? As you can see by the photo, I examined it quite thoroughly and came away more confused than I was back in the 60s. There’s a lot of stuff that just doesn’t add up. To wit:

  • Oswald was not a particularly good marksman
  • The alleged weapon was an average quality bolt-action rifle, meaning one would have to manually discharge the spent shell and move a live shell into the firing chamber, which makes firing 3 or 4 bullets (they’re not exactly sure) accurately in just a few seconds very difficult
  • Critical documents were withheld from the Warren Commission and they ignored some of the testimony and some of the evidence was tampered with
  • Certain film and photographs of the assassination were confiscated

And to me the most interesting controversy revolved around the ‘Magic Bullet Theory’, which goes as follows: Allegedly one bullet passed through President Kennedy’s neck and Governor Connally’s chest and wrist and embedded itself in the Governor’s thigh. If so, this bullet traversed 15 layers of clothing, 7 layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of tissue, struck a necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone. A magic bullet indeed!

While the tour told an interesting and detailed story, I came away disturbed, disturbed that we still don’t know all thewho-killed facts of what really happened that day, and why. Viable cases have been made for various murder suspects, including Vice President Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, the KGB, Fidel Castro, a Secret Service agent and the mafia, just to name a few!

A lot stuff just doesn’t add up.  So if our government didn’t give us the real scoop on this, I’m going to look into that so-called moon landing we did back in 1969 and perhaps start searching for Elvis, who may still be alive.