A life in letters: Kennedy, John F. (1917-1963)

The 35^th President of the United States, assassinated on 22 November 1963. As an 11-year-old, I was aware of his name and position, but I don’t think anything else connected with his Presidency – even the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 when nuclear war seemed imminent – had  really impacted on me.  Like so many, however, I remember where I was when I heard of his assassination – standing on the hall of our house, welcoming guests my parents had invited for dinner. They’d heard of the events in Dallas on their car radio on the way over, and passed on the news as soon as we opened our front door. 

 

Two days later, Lee Harvey Oswald, the sniper who assassinated Kennedy ,was himself shot by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with links to organised crime, as Oswald was handcuffed and being moved from police headquarters to the county jail. In the playground we enjoyed the rhythm of the words ‘The man who killed the man who killed President Kennedy’, and imagined Ruby himself being shot so that our chant could be extended -  ‘The man who killed the man who killed the man who killed the President’  and so on. 

 

I built a pagoda-style tower with Lego bricks and dubbed it the President Kennedy Memorial Building, its name written on a card inside an empty plastic Wilkinson Sword razor blade box displayed at the foot of the structure. My first published piece of writing was in the school magazine published in Spring 1964, a report on the proposed demolition of the building some date deep in the 21^st century. Later, I read a book club edition of William Manchester’s painstaking recreation of Kennedy’s assassination, The Death of a President, originally published in 1967. It was a disturbing read.