Strangely, I remember much about that day. Aged 13, I was at home in Mt Eliza, on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, near Melbourne, Australia. 12.30pm Dallas time on that fateful Friday was 5.30am Melbourne time on Saturday morning the 23rd. It was late spring and warm, summer was only days away. I remember rising for breakfast and the…
Strangely, I remember much about that day. Aged 13, I was at home in Mt Eliza, on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, near Melbourne, Australia. 12.30pm Dallas time on that fateful Friday was 5.30am Melbourne time on Saturday morning the 23rd. It was late spring and warm, summer was only days away. I remember rising for breakfast and the early radio news brought that terrible story. Early details were very sketchy and we spent quite some time by the radio listening for updates, which came painfully slowly. I remember the rest of the day quite vividly. It’s even stranger to recall those events on the very day 60 years later, as we’ve all just done. I have visited Dallas a number of times since, which always evokes the emotions of that morning.
I spent much of that day hanging around the house, much of it alone in a quiet mood of reflection but feeling disoriented and uncomfortable. We knew of Camelot and soon learned it was over. That night we saw the first grainy pictures from Dealey Plaza on our Admiral B&W TV. I guess they’d been transmitted across the trans-pacific cable. It was like I’d lost a close friend or relative, which I had just the year before when an aunt died. This time the emotion of loss lingered for quite some time.
On reflection now, this event was amongst the first I recall of the disquieting shift in the US economic and global policy direction, we now understand as the rules based international order, which in may ways commenced or recommenced on that day. The move back to war which Kennedy clearly admonished and was determined to end, demonstrated through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuba crisis, his difficult meeting with Khrushchev and his announcement of the Vietnam withdrawal, reversed in the days following his murder. We just need to look at the last 3 years of a Democrat led government and the prior 4, to understand the enormous consequences of that day for the entire world.
Strangely, I remember much about that day. Aged 13, I was at home in Mt Eliza, on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, near Melbourne, Australia. 12.30pm Dallas time on that fateful Friday was 5.30am Melbourne time on Saturday morning the 23rd. It was late spring and warm, summer was only days away. I remember rising for breakfast and the early radio news brought that terrible story. Early details were very sketchy and we spent quite some time by the radio listening for updates, which came painfully slowly. I remember the rest of the day quite vividly. It’s even stranger to recall those events on the very day 60 years later, as we’ve all just done. I have visited Dallas a number of times since, which always evokes the emotions of that morning.
I spent much of that day hanging around the house, much of it alone in a quiet mood of reflection but feeling disoriented and uncomfortable. We knew of Camelot and soon learned it was over. That night we saw the first grainy pictures from Dealey Plaza on our Admiral B&W TV. I guess they’d been transmitted across the trans-pacific cable. It was like I’d lost a close friend or relative, which I had just the year before when an aunt died. This time the emotion of loss lingered for quite some time.
On reflection now, this event was amongst the first I recall of the disquieting shift in the US economic and global policy direction, we now understand as the rules based international order, which in may ways commenced or recommenced on that day. The move back to war which Kennedy clearly admonished and was determined to end, demonstrated through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuba crisis, his difficult meeting with Khrushchev and his announcement of the Vietnam withdrawal, reversed in the days following his murder. We just need to look at the last 3 years of a Democrat led government and the prior 4, to understand the enormous consequences of that day for the entire world.