Jan and I Were Inspired by JFK
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 50 seconds
Fifty-nine years is one year shy of three score years, but it has gone by faster than the speed of light.
When JFK was assassinated, Jan and I had only recently become teenagers.
Although we experienced the shock of the murder of a president in different states, the impact was similar.
The idealism of the time was seared into our shared souls.
Ninety-nine months after that dark day in America, I became a VISTA Volunteer in East Williamsburg. Jan joined VISTA nine months later.
- Would we have met if we had not become VISTA Volunteers?
- Would we have joined VISTA if JFK had lived?
I will never know the answer, but the memory of the day of the assassination will never be forgotten.
On that Friday morning, I was in a social studies class at Jinks Junior High School. We had taken a test the day before on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Our teacher asked our opinion before handing out the graded exams.
One student got the date, November 19, correct but wrote the year as 1963,” said the teacher. “Should I grade that as incorrect? Or ignore it?”
Every student in the class, except one, argued that it should be ignored.
I said it should be graded as incorrect. I believed my argument, made with passion and logic, was about to win the day when the PA announcement of a shooting in Dallas altered the balance of the day.
Classes ceased, and teachers, school staff, and students wandered the hallway.
Many cried, and a few celebrated!
I wept and committed myself to Tikun Olam and started on a path that would lead me to meet Jan.
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My life was beginning to find meaning and purpose.
My journal entries indicated that I was confident I would regain the love I had lost by the spring.
