In the fall of 1963 I was just newly 18, I wasn't old enough to vote in the previous Presidential election, but I romanticized Kennedy like many of us. My firstborn daughter was 10 months old, just starting to walk. I was 2 months pregnant with my second child. In the LA suburb of Arcadia, it was a bit murky, partially cloudy, nondescript afternoon. I had my baby girl on my hip, had just stepped out of the tiny duplex where I lived into the tiny front yard, surrounded by a low stone wall. Typical LA November afternoon, a bit smoggy, boring. My neighbor on the west side stepped out to me and called out, "Kennedy has been shot". I felt the world crash in, felt the world turn on its axis, felt the world change. It was completely unthinkable. The world to me then wasn't the way it is now, violence was rare and distant. Her words slammed into my heart, and I held my baby girl and cried. I don't remember a thing after that, I don't remember watching my black and white tv for news, don't remember much of the funeral. That moment is like crystal, shattering glass, clear, sharp and hard.
I don't remember MLK as clearly, but I was watching tv in another LA suburban town in 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was shot, saw it happen. Again, unthinkable, but less so. The world had already changed back in 1963, Watts had happened, people were protesting the war, violence wasn't something new. The world turned in November of 1963. At least it did for me.
