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

[Carolyn Sturgeon]

Steve's comment from Feb. 4 made me jump to my keyboard--

>
>-- my point was that for those of us who aren't
>old enough to remember (or weren't alive during) the assassination or
>death of a president in office, as with JFK and FDR, the Challenger is the
>closest thing that approximates it, in terms of a segment of the
>population recalling a shared sense of grief.
>
>That is, I can't know what it was like when JFK died, but I am aware of
>the response to the Challenger, and it's the only thing I can think of
>that comes close to a nation grieving as a unit within my lifetime.
>
>--- Steve K.

and A. Vine suggested the shooting of Reagan as a candidate for this
institutional memory test...

I think it takes a death, not just an assassination effort.  I'm afraid
we've become almost blase (insert accent) about them mere attempts...

Although I am a baby boomer and was 10 when JFK was killed, I don't remember
the much touted test of my generation of where I was when I heard of the
assassination.  I do remember when Ruby shot Oswald just a few days later.
I think for me it has to do with first <hearing> about JFK's death rather
than <seeing> Ruby on "live" news shoot Oswald.

I wonder if John Kennedy Jr.'s death will qualify some day as a great
separator.  It certainly captivated the nation, if not the world as Princess
Diana's death did a few years ago.  I think John Kennedy Jr. is particularly
potentially evocative both for his own death, for the Kennedy curse, and for
almost a second dying of the whole Camelot fable...

Carolyn Sturgeon
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