Dealey Plaza

November 22.

If you're over 50, you cannot write today's date without remembering exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news flash from Dallas in 1963. The next three days were a blur of images, mostly in black and white, from the TV set on the whole time or from the newspaper photos. New names and places entered the lexicon: the grassy knoll, the Texas School Book Depository, Parkland Memorial Hospital, Love Field, Lee Harvey Oswald, Officer J.D. Tippet, Jack Ruby, Arlington National Cemetery, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," the muffled drums, the silent parade, the eternal flame.

November 22, 1963 has become one of those dates. Just as those over 85 remember October 24, 1929, over 75 remember December 7, 1941 and April 12, 1945 and we all remember 9/11, the date has become a shorthand reminder of everything before and everything after and the difference between then and now.

There will always be questions about what really happened in Dealey Plaza on that Friday afternoon. As recently as 2005 there was new speculation as to where the shots came from and whether or not the films of the event are "accurate." Most of us who remember that day, however, do not dwell on the event as much as they reflect on how life changed in that instant. We've taken it from the immediate tragedy and used it as a marker for our lives and our society. Some of us mark the date as the last time we felt truly safe about anything. A decade that began with the New Frontier and Camelot ended with the SDS and Hair.

It would be simplistic to say that everything that came after -- Vietnam, the counter culture, hard rock, the arms race, Watergate, disco, the Middle East, OPEC, terrorism -- would not have happened had President Kennedy not gone to Dallas, had run for re-election in 1964 and beaten Barry Goldwater in a close election. Nothing so much enhanced the life of the young president as much as how he died; an election that was decided by one vote per precinct in 1960 turned into a 60-40 landslide as recalled by the voters the summer after Kennedy was assassinated. That isn't so much revisionism as it is the optimism we had about ourselves and our country, regardless of politics, and the pain we felt with the loss.

Commentators are fond of saying that great events shape our nation and that everything is different after such an event as 9/11 or November 22, 1963. In a way that is true, but it isn't the event that shapes us so much as our response to it. September 11, 2001 united us -- however briefly -- as a nation against an enemy. November 22, 1963 united us too, but it also made us look at ourselves and wonder how such a thing could happen in our own country, in such a nice town as Dallas, and on such a warm sunny afternoon in Dealey Plaza.

Footnote: In addition to John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died on November 22, 1963. Novelist Peter Kreeft speculated that it must have been an interesting first night in the spiritual world for discussions of theology and politics.

(This post was originally published at Bark Bark Woof Woof on November 22, 2005, and updated where appropriate.)