The Day the Earth Stood Still

At 11:33 a.m. on Friday November 22 1963 I was working on my drawing for the Detroit News Drafting Competition design in my drafting class in Pontiac Central High School.  I had just finished sharpening my drafting pencil and was darkening some of the lines on my drawing.  I was sitting on the table on the back corner of the room with windows around me convinced that I would win the competition.  The announcement tone of the speakers in the classroom came on and the principal announced that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas. 

I remember stopping and wondering what that meant.  I looked around and all the other students had also stopped working and just looked at each other.  I forget the teacher’s name, Mr. Lowry I believe, just sat there and stared at the speakers on the upper corner of the room.  No one said anything.  About 30 minutes later the Principal came over the speaker again and announced that President Kennedy was dead.  I felt like the floor had opened up and I was falling into an endless hole.  I remember grabbing the corner of the drafting table just to make certain I was not falling.  Still, nobody said anything for the longest time.

I was in the 10^th grade at that time and the 1960 Presidential campaign was the political “coming of age” for me.  Prior to that time, politics an elected officials was something that was given, that one studied in civics class, or history class, that one heard people discuss but since it never affected you, one did not put much attention to it.  But the 1960 Presidential campaign changed all that for me.  I discovered what being progressive meant and what being conservative meant.  I discovered that people with money voted for Republicans and people without money voted for Democrats.  I wasn’t sure exactly why, but generally Democrats wanted to share and Republicans did not.  Having arrived from Mexico recently I knew that our family could not vote, but that didn’t stop me from being involved with politics.  I remember my mother saying that wasn’t our business, but I wasn’t sure that that was true. 

I remember having mixed emotions during the debates because I happened to like Nixon and the fact that he came across as being pretty smart, but I also liked Kennedy because he always made sense.  I remember thinking that if the people in my Dad’s Union were for Kennedy how could all of them be wrong?  I had a Kennedy button that I was proud to wear – I wish I would have kept it.  I don’t know what became of that button.

I walked home from Pontiac Central High to our house on the south east side of the city.  Every day on the way home I would stop at the Pontiac Library half way to our house and stayed there to finish my homework.  I also used to treat myself after completing my homework with about half hour of reading my favorite magazines:  Aviation Week and Space Technology and Scientific America.  That Friday I went to the library, to my favorite desk on the east side of the building in the aisle way at the end of the book shelves.  I didn’t do homework that day.  I sat there and cried.