The Sixth Floor Window
22/11/23 06:31
November 22, 2023 (Vol. 17 No. 48) - John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected the 35th President of the United States on my eighth birthday. He was murdered 60 years ago today, just two weeks after my 11th birthday. The assassination happened on a Friday, just a few hours before St. Michaels, Maryland, Boy Scout Troop 147 gathered for its weekly meeting at the Scout Cabin in St. Mary's Square. The hours after the assassination were filled with angst, anger and confusion. Of course, an 11-year-old's perspective on events - some of which he couldn't understand - was quite different. A first concern had to do with classmate Jim Rodney's birthday party on Saturday. Was it still on? (It was.) The second had to do with that night's Boy Scout meeting: Was it still on? Troop 147's Scoutmaster Arthur Southard lived on the same rural road as I and he drove me to the meeting. Normally, the evening's activity would focus on matters such as how to tie certain knots, tips on camping in the woods, or instruction toward earning a merit badge. However, this night was different. After the normal Pledge of Allegiance and recitation of the Boy Scout Oath and Law, Mr. Southard delivered a monologue that I remember to this very day. At that hour, we did not know very much about Lee Harvey Oswald, the man with the rifle who stood in a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository and murdered President Kennedy. But in a strong, almost angry tone, our scoutmaster told us how Oswald had broken every tenant of the Boy Scout Oath and Law. After only 15 minutes, there was a moment of silence and the meeting was dismissed. Any of the scouts who had not appreciated the gravity of the national tragedy did so now. It wasn't until March 2007 that I had the opportunity to visit Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository. I had gone to Dallas to attend a University of Kansas Journalism School alumni gathering. When I entered the plaza, my first thought was how small it was compared the huge space it had occupied in my memory. The death of President Kennedy was a point of demarcation for me and our nation. I visited the Sixth Floor Museum and got to see where Oswald sat, munched cold fried chicken, and waited to disrupt the course of world history. Sixty years on, the events that were launched by that madman lying in wait at that sixth floor window still loom large. We can't help but wonder how the trajectory of American history would have changed had Oswald's rifle shot had missed its mark. (Of course, having visited the scene of the crime and seeing how small it really is, it is unlikely that any experienced shooter could have missed the mark.) Arthur Southard has been gone for 18 years. However, his words on that dark, cold November night still resonate. How, in the name of God and country, could that man in the sixth floor window have done such a dastardly deed? Oswald is also gone, the victim of another vigilante. So we will never definitively know the answer. However, 60 years on, during a period of raucous discord in the American family, that question remains relevant. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.