Like another posting, I was also home that day, so I must have been sick. I remember sitting in the living room, reading, my mother was either folding laundry or ironing - and our neighbor ran in from across the street to tell us "The President's Been Shot!" We turned the television on - and my mother was very upset. My father had already left five months before to move to Indiana (from New York suburb where we lived) to start his new job and look for a house for all of us. My mother, brother, sister and I were in the small Long Island town, as she tried to sell it so we would join him in Indiana.
I don't remember being that excited/upset about the assassination - perhaps I saw too many westerns (dozens shot every day on MY TV watching!). I do remember enormous attention from adults toward my brother (age 6) and myself, which made me feel awkward.
And of course for days, the events of the lying in state, the funeral - consumed every moment of television - and this overlapped with Thanksgiving - so all were home to watch endless hours of the funeral. (Without dad there, we went for Thanksgiving to my aunt/uncle/cousins' home in the next town). To me at 8 years old, the loss of the TV programs I liked to watch - was a bitter one. I found the TV spectacles of a coffin being observed by the TV cameras in the Capitol rotunda for 7 straight hours on TV, or on a later day, horses moving at a slow and steady clip for miles on miles on miles - until they reached a cemetary where soldiers would fire their rifles at the rehearsed pace in unison - extremely boring. And adults just kept telling me "You understand? The President's been killed. Lyndon Johnson is our new president" and I'd nod my head, and say, yes, I understand. (My poor little brother cried for the TV programs lost to him for the days of the non-stop coverage - the adults were unsympathetic - they apparently liked watching unmoving coffins and slowly moving horses - for HOURS and HOURS!).
I think the series did well to copy the clothes and houses and cars - and I thought the accents were pretty well done. But the series is just written poorly. I feel sorry for the actors who seemed to have really put a lot of effort into it.
A good contrast is the series about Winston Churchill's decade out of power in the 1930s. It was also about 8 hours - but was fascinating, brilliant. I think part of the reason is that they chose several large political issues to follow over the course of that decade - and they weren't THAT interested in the personal side of Churchill's life (the personal can make a series seem a soap opera).
I'd bet that those who were alive then - have over the years read SO VERY MUCH about the Kennedys, their ancestors, the anecdotes, etc. that the series was not a good idea. There have even been TV series just about Joe Junior! I must have read at least a dozen books about the Kennedys - probably two dozen - beginning with the Salinger, O'Donnell, Schlesinger, Sorensen books that came out shortly after JFK's death - and continuing along the roller coaster of atttiudes about him and his administration since - from Navasky's biography to those such as Nigel Hamilton's or the joint family books by Doris Kearns Goodwin's or Collier and Horrowitz.
Overall, I think JFK was very bright, ambitious, extraordinarily charming - and charming in a way that I havne't seen in politicians recently. E.g., I think Clinton was charming - but Clinton tried to be - would go to people and seek to charm. JFK was one whom others would approach and want to be near and WANT to report wonderful things about. Part of it was his youth - remember that he was still having kids in the White House. And Caroline and John-John were VERY young when he entered the White House. That's appealing, and hadn't happened in anyone's memory. Part of his appeal was good looks (particularly those of Jacqueline), part of it was the very large happy family background he seemed to come from - but he was also rather well-read, and very cosmopolitan even as a 30 year old. And he was witty - and a handsome, wealthy, witty, young, cosmopolitan war hero will always do well in politics - especially if he's relatively cautious about taking any substantive positions out of the mainstream, and yet manages to seem very much that he wanted change. That he was then assassinated - of course pressed a kind of sealing wax on a favorable impression, as youthful death always does.
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