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| Image from GCS graduation announcement 1971 |
50
years ago I was a little girl in elementary school, Germantown Central School,
NY. Every Friday afternoon most of the classes in school had ‘free time’. They
could play board games, read books or draw. I was never a part of that because the
Catholic children boarded a school bus and rode to the center of town to the
Church of the Resurrection for religious instruction.
There
was a building next to the church with classrooms upstairs. Carmelite nuns from
a nearby convent came and taught us about our religion. They were beautifully
serene women who taught us with soft voices. On November 22, 1963 we were with
the nuns learning about the saints and reciting our prayers. The lessons had
ended and we were noisily lining up to go downstairs and back onto the bus. Unexpectedly,
our parish priest came up the stairs, raised his hand for silence and told us
that our president, our country’s first Catholic president, was dead. Stunned,
we all knelt down and he led us in prayer.
Our
little town was far from Dallas and Washington, DC and we were not in fear for
our own lives. But we were all shocked that someone would kill our much loved
young, handsome president. Our mother and her mother who had been delighted
when the Irish Catholic president was elected followed the news closely. There
were days of watching television and reading the newspapers for every bit of
information.
Fifty
years have passed and the world has changed in many ways but it sometimes feels
like that day was the beginning of those changes. On 11 September 2011 I was the teacher in the classroom when the world shifted again.
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| JFK Birthplace, Boston MA |
