DAZE WORK: 60 years since we said goodbye to Camelot

Honestly at this point in my life I have a difficult time remembering what I ate for breakfast or what I did last night.

But like virtually everyone of a certain age, I can recall with vivid detail where I was and what was happening 60 years ago Wednesday.

Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, may have been the date that will live in infamy for my parents’ generation, and Sept. 11, 2001, will always be the day most of the current generation points to as a watershed moment. Even Nov. 11, 1986, will go down as the day Greencastle changed forever when IBM announced it was closing its East Side plant and taking 985 local jobs with it. One of the All-America City Committee members even noted during our 1991 presentation that the only other time he could recall exactly where he stood when he heard the news was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

That’s why Nov. 22, 1963, remains the date that will always evoke paralyzing memories for my generation as the day America lost its innocence with the killing of the president in Dallas.

It couldn’t have happened. Not in our idyllic country. Not in the United States. Not in America, land of the free, home of the brave and keeper of the Baby Boom fantasy that embraced those perfect days of “Ozzie and Harriett” and “Leave It to Beaver.”

As the events of Dallas were unfolding, I was in grade school, specifically on duty as a safety patrol boy -- complete with Army surplus helmet spray-painted orange -- in my Chicago suburb where we walked to school every morning and went back home for lunch at 11:45. I was standing in the middle of 18th Avenue at the main entrance to Lindop School when some kid skipping past said, “Somebody shot the president.”

I remembered thinking to myself, “Yea, with a rubber band.”

By the time my safety patrol shift ended at 1 p.m. Chicago time, word of the shooting was already all over the TV news, even in a pre-cable era when we only had three networks and WGN.

Back in class, the stunned silence was shattered by the crackling of the school intercom, then the principal’s somber voice telling us President Kennedy was dead. Girls cried. Boy were catatonic. All we really wanted to do was throw up.

It had all barely settled in when Mr. Skizak, our math teacher, broke the silence. Entering the room, he announced that we would be taking our math test as scheduled, despite the historic nature of the moment.

I’ve been bitter about that for most of the ensuing 60 years, believing we’d have been better served by the teachers wheeling in a portable TV to let us watch the world changing before our very eyes, as we had a couple years earlier when astronaut John Glenn circled the Earth.

But I suppose the adults in the room thought they were protecting our innocence for at least a couple more hours.

After school dismissed at 3:35 (don’t ask me why 3:35, not 3:30), I went straight home to find my mother, a housewife with three children at that point in her life, seated on the couch, glued to our Zenith Space Command console television. I’d never seen her like that. Usually she was far too busy with laundry, cleaning and cooking to waste time on TV. It only added to the surreal and serious nature of what was going on. I literally felt our innocence slipping away.

It was like I spent the weekend in a trance. I remember playing basketball at my friend Bobby Baur’s house a couple blocks away. Our hearts weren’t in it though as we spent more time debating whether we’d have school or not on Monday.

Then along came Sunday morning. The TV was on, like it had been much of the past 48 hours. And right there in our living room, I watched a man in an overcoat and dark hat (Jack Ruby) shoot and kill another man, JFK assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald, just like it was a scene from “Gunsmoke” or “Naked City.” Only this time it was happening live and in color in my Broadview living room.

What a time in history. The youngest U.S. president ever elected with a First Family that looked like it stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Camelot, the press called it. And an assassin’s bullets put an end to that.

And created a series of indelible images that have endured 60 years now ...

-- Secret Service Officer Clint Hill jumping on the back of the Kennedy limo as it sped away from Dealey Plaza.

-- Spectators running in all directions as people pointed to the Grassy Knoll and a lifetime of conspiracy theories were born.

-- First Lady Jackie Kennedy still in that blood-stained pink suit and hat.

-- A wide-eyed Oswald making his way through a sea of reporters and officers at the Dallas police station, proclaiming to all that he was “a patsy.”

-- Ruby lurching forward in the police department basement, gun thrust into Oswald’s gut and firing as an excruciating look consumes Oswald’s face.

-- The riderless horse emotionally leading the funeral procession.

-- Bobby, Jackie and Ted Kennedy walking like zombies behind the hearse.

-- Three-year-old John-John, emulating the soldiers around him, saluting his father’s casket as it passes by.

None of that will ever fade from my memory. It hasn’t after 60 years and won’t the rest of my life.

I have a silver 1963 Washington quarter I’ve saved for years. It rests symbolically on the nightstand alongside a couple of pens, two broken watches and a replica Chicago Cubs World Series ring that must weigh five pounds.

It’s not a “lucky” coin but I’ll pick it up on occasion and run my fingers over it, thinking about 1963 and what could have been.

We don’t go to the moon without President Kennedy. We don’t have the civil rights laws we have without him. Would he have brought an end to Vietnam during his administration? What would have followed Camelot? We’ll never know.

One thing’s for sure, for most of us, it was the end of the innocence.