Today marks the 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination and the first real traumatic event of my life that ended my eight-year-old universe of innocence.
For me, the oldest of six in an Irish Catholic family, John Kennedy, was the embodiment of what a hero was supposed to be. In the years since his killing, there’s been a string of similar national atrocities culminating most recently in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. These days, it’s hard to maintain any semblance of my third-grade self’s optimism in a country where grade schoolers have to drill for the possibility of a mass casualty shooting in their school. When I was in third grade, our survival drills required us to sit with our little faces pressed against the pastel cinder block walls of our school hallway to contemplate the nuclear apocalypse. We did get to pick a book to read as a diversion. I picked “You Will Go to the Moon” which seemed like a good plan B at the time.
