The Day Our Fathers Cried

Fifty nine years. Almost six decades. Unforgettable.

To young Americans - anyone under 50 - this excursion into morbid memories must seem strange.

But those of us who were children when John F. Kennedy was assassinated can't forget what we saw that day.

We saw our fathers cry.

Nov. 22, 1963, was parent-teacher conference day. Dad was in my grade-school classroom meeting with my teacher while I waited on the playground.

Midway through the conference the school principal burst in, screaming that President Kennedy had been shot.

"That's not funny," my father huffed.

"I'm not joking," the principal insisted.

Conference over.

Meanwhile, I'd grown thirsty. The outdoor water fountain had erratic pressure and I'd been doused when I'd leaned in for a drink.

Funny what you remember.

I was drying off when my father sprinted out of the school. His face was granite. I was terrified my teacher had told him something awful about me.

"Have you been crying?" he asked when he saw my wet face.

"No, why?"

"President Kennedy's been shot," he said. Together we raced to his car.

Driving down leafy streets, we strained to hear the bulletins crackling over the car radio.

As we pulled into our driveway, the announcement came. The president was dead.

I saw my father's jaw twitch. He turned away from me and stared into the autumn afternoon. He reached into his pocket for a hankie and dabbed at his eyes.

I'd never before seen my father cry. It would be 30 years before I'd see him do it again, when my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer.

We stumbled into the house and turned on the news.

The next morning my dad brought in the newspaper and read it in silence. That afternoon, my mother carefully refolded it and tucked it in a plastic bag.

"You'll want this someday," she told me.

She was right.

The front page of Trenton's tabloid, "The Trentonian," was unadorned on Nov. 23, 1963. Just a somber portrait of Kennedy under a two-word headline:

"President Murdered"

What else was there to say?

"We should drive down to Washington for the funeral Monday," my father announced. "We ought to stand there and show our respect."

But government officials cautioned against it. They predicted congested highways all along the East Coast as thousands made their way to the capital.

In the end, we watched the funeral like everyone else. At home, on our black-and-white Zenith.

My mother sat on the sofa and wept. My father sat beside her, his head in his hands. My brother and I were cross-legged on the floor, forbidden to leave the room.

Watch this. Watch every minute, our parents insisted. This is history.

The day of Kennedy's funeral was a national day of mourning. No school, no work. A holiday with no happiness in it.

Those events are seared into our memories forever.

The day the president was assassinated.

The day our fathers cried.