Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

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I can’t believe it’s been 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I was ten years old when it happened. I can vividly remember that sad day in the fifth grade at St. Clements School when Sister Mary Reparata tearfully told us the horrible news. We were then dismissed early and I walked home sobbing. The kid downstairs met me in the driveway with a football and wanted me to toss it around with him. I asked, “How can you think of playing when the president has just been killed?” He got mad and called me a fink or a fruit or something. I pushed him and ran in the house crying. The whole world was devastated by the unthinkable tragedy that happened in Dallas, Texas that 22nd day of November in 1963, but for me it was personal.

When I was in the second grade, I was friends with a classmate named Barbara Kennedy. For some still unknown reason, she and I were rooting for Richard Nixon for president in the election of 1960. Now granted, I was only seven years old so I have no idea why I was a Nixon fan. Even more bizarre was the fact that Barbara, whose last name was Kennedy, was also in Nixon’s corner. Sister Clarinda also thought it strange that we were the only two students in the classroom (the Catholic classroom mind you) who weren’t cheering on the Catholic candidate. It was the first sign of my rabble-rousing inclinations. It was the shape of things to come when I would grow my hair, wear beads, go to anti-war rallies, and form high school protests to abolish the dress code.

Sister Clarinda made a deal with us. If Kennedy was elected, we would both write letters of congratulations to the new president. Well, he was elected so we both wrote letters and sent them off to the White House, in care of President John F. Kennedy. A few weeks passed and I had pretty much forgotten about the letter. Then as I got home from school one day, my mother met me at the door, so excited that she actually scared me. “You got a very special letter, Jimmy!” I was thrilled because I had never gotten anything in the mail before except an occasional birthday card from an aunt or an  uncle.  So I wouldn’t rip it open in excitement, mom opened it, but only after telling me that it was from The White House! Yes, it was in an official White House envelope and the letter was on official White House stationary.

JFK had received my letter and was thankful for my support and well wishes. My cohort, Barbara Kennedy also got a letter and we were both treated like royalty by the nuns, students and our families. It was front page news in the school paper, The Spotlight. My personal connection to John F. Kennedy had been established. Who would have even dared to imagine that three short years later I would get my first introduction to a thing called grief.

I was torn apart when our fifth grade teacher Sister Reparata, speaking through tears, broke the painful news to her classroom of ten year olds. We all started crying as we got our coats, schoolbags, and made our way home in a fog. For the next few days we all watched the sad black and white TV coverage of JFK’s funeral. The drumbeat during the procession still echoes in my memory along with the vision of little JFK Jr.’s heart wrenching salute to his fallen father. The nation was dealt a punch to the throat that dismal day in Dallas. It was the first time someone I felt a deep connection with passed away and the senselessly tragic way the president died made it worse.

It was a lot for a ten-year-old little boy to endure. But somehow we all managed to get on with our lives, not knowing that we would be confronted with two more senseless assassinations five years later, with Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. One year after JFK died I lost my grandfather, then my other grandfather, and my grandmother. The icing on the cake of misery was the death of John Lennon. At least I was 27 when he died even though it didn’t make it any easier. I still get mixed feelings of joy and anger when I hear John’s voice.

So, after 50 years I must say that I am still saddened when I think of the loss the country, JFK’s family, and the world suffered. I know we are all thinking about how much we loved John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his ideals and visions. I can’t help but get a lump in my throat when I think of that seven-year-old boy, gleaming from ear to ear, as he held in his hand a letter from The White House.