November 1963

     When my Mom went to work when I was nine years old, she was secretary to who I believe was the lone lawyer in North Boston. The office was in an ancient building at the corner of Zimmerman Road and the old Route 219. Mom's space was in the front – she greeted clients as they walked in the front door facing 219. There were chairs for the folks to sit in and wait. Mom was the secretary – she answered the phone, made appointments, did a lot of typing, took dictation, managed payroll, was a notary public, and for a long time Mom did people's taxes for $25!  Her boss, Mr. Russell Danieu, was down the hall in the next room – his office door was across from the hall window that had the only air conditioner in the place (North Boston does not need an air conditioner for too many days of the year – but on those few hot humid few days, the little unit was hardly enough!), and beyond Mr. Danieu's office down the hall a little more, was a space that served as the lunch area, and a couple of years later that space sported a huge, temperamental photo-copier. A tiny bathroom off of the lunch room then connected to the back room of the North Boston Post Office which also had a front room with all the PO boxes and the FBI Most Wanted posters and a front door of its own facing Zimmerman.

         The two postal workers used the lunch room area for breaks and conversation, and that is how Mom got to know them – but the post office was closed at lunch time – and so Mom was alone most days for her sandwich or cup-a-soup.

         It was not too many months after Mom started working at the law office, November of 1963, that one day the postal worker, Kay, had walked home for lunch – this was quite a walk – about halfway up Herman's Hill. And when she came back, Kay was as pale as could be, and she asked Mom to try and tune in the radio in the lunch room. Kay said when she was walking back to the post office after lunch, a car stopped her and told her the President had been shot! She could not believe her ears. And at that point, Mom could not believe her ears either!

         They got the radio to come in as best they could, and that was how Mom found out about the Kennedy assassination.

         I was in fifth grade at the time, and I do not remember any of the teachers or administrators of the school talking or making announcements about it – either they had made the judgment call of letting us find out at home, or I heard rumblings about it and tuned them out. When Clark and I got home from school that day, Eric, who was in half-day kindergarten and would have spent the afternoon at a neighbor's house, came in after hearing our bus in the neighborhood, and announced that the President had died. I decided to wait for Mom to find out for sure.

         The television was nothing on all three of the stations that we got – nothing but news of the assassination. It was hard to think of life ever getting back to normal again after such a tragedy when television programming was obviously not normal. How could a kid possibly believe anything is ever going to be all right again?

         TV showed the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby over and over again. The President's funeral was on all the stations. The theories and conspiracy-speculating began immediately and never faded away. I thought at the time that it was weird that the President was shot in Texas and the Vice President was from Texas – but that was not one of the theories being batted about – what did I know, I was only 10? My Mom's best friend from high school and her husband and two sons went to Washington, D.C., to be part of the long line of mourners who walked past Kennedy's casket before the funeral. I thought that was strange – but later I learned to appreciate the desire to participate in something historic.

         Almost every American alive on that day in November of '63 has a “where were you the day Kennedy died?” story – here are my Mom's and mine!

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