by Lorelei Marcus

It was around 11:30 AM, just before lunch. The PA system crackled to life and every head turned from their desks towards the speaker. It was my 10th grade English class.

“The President has been shot!” said the tinny voice. We had just been wrapping up our unit on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, all about the death of a nation's leader, but I didn’t really have the chance to appreciate the synchronicity at the time.

My teacher wheeled in a portable TV. I looked to my left at my good friend Cecilia. She was German, and only just moved here a couple years ago. She was shaking real bad, a sharp contrast to the cold stillness I’d been shocked into. I didn’t, couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In fact I’d expected the class to erupt into a sea of whispers, but all that was there was a faint crackle and Walter Cronkite's strong voice repeating over and over.

“In Dallas Texas this morning President Kennedy was assassinated at 1:30 Eastern Time, 10:30 Western Time. Three shots were fired-”

The school couldn’t let us out early, but they might as well have. The rest of my classes were a hazy tear-filled blur, punctuated by the continuous drone of Cronkite’s voice. When I was walking home that day across the softball field, I saw the football coach, one of the toughest men I know, with a wet handkerchief blanketing his face. Even the trees seemed to be weeping as their leaves crackled in the autumn wind.

Even in the fall it doesn’t get cold in Southern California. Yet under a pile of blankets in the living room, snuggled up to my parents with a cup of cocoa, I couldn’t ease the chilling squeeze on my heart. Even writing this now it’s like a subtle blizzard is raging inside me. If the President was shot, how can we say any of us are safe?

November 22nd, 1963 will always be a day to remember. Everything’s changed, I’ve changed. We’ve found now that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for this… horrendous act. He’ll be put in jail for life, where he belongs.

Even so, I think I would trade a lot to have my dad come in and tell me it was all a misunderstanding. During the live coverage, Cronkite kept saying “The president is dead… but not officially.” I think he was hoping so too.

Instead, he and we were left with loss. A loss to Jackie, a loss to the nation, a loss to the world. At this point, I think the only thing left to do is grieve, quietly and together.

And try to understand. Oswald, a U.S. Marine, started an innocent flower, but the serpent was beneath it. MacBeth's motives were plain and old as humanity. But Oswald's..

Why?