proof of age - I know its off topic but...

Donald M. Lance LanceDM at MISSOURI.EDU
Sat Feb 5 06:25:30 UTC 2000


Still off topic.  The summer before JFK was shot, I was reading the Dallas Morning News,
to which the people for whom I was house-sitting (in Austin) subscribed.  I could barely
stand to look at the front page because they ALWAYS twisted some story to turn it into
Kennedy-bashing.  That fall, during 4th period, my accelerated senior English students
interrupted and asked, "Is that true what they're saying out there?"  DML: "What are they
saying?" "That President Kennedy was shot."  DML: "Where is he today?" "In Dallas.'  DML:
"Could be."  Words CAN kill.

And NO, I don't for a split second believe that LBJ had anything to do with it.  The
Dallas papers were as anti-LBJ as they were anti-JFK.  School children in Dallas cheered,
but not my students in Corpus Christi.  The Corpus papers (Hart-Hanks chain, for those who
know of this 1950s-60s group) were supportive of JFK and LBJ.

DMLance


"Peter A. McGraw" wrote:

> Still off-topic, and still with apologies, but while JFK's assination was
> indeed "a segment of the population recalling a shared sense of grief," it
> was much more.  It was the shattering of a world we had all inhabited until
> then, and would now never be able to return to.  Assassinations had been
> something that we read about in history books, not something that could
> ACTUALLY HAPPEN in our own experience.  Suddenly it was real, and an alien
> concept, vulnerability, was staring us in right the face.
>
> I don't claim I analyzed all this clearly in my mind when I heard the news,
> but I think it was all mixed in with the emotions and was what drove the
> sense of disbelief.  Even though the emotions were different, for me the
> JFK assassination was much more akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall than to
> the Challenger disaster in its world-changing dimension.



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