The Year Thanksgiving Didn't Happen
Sixty Years Ago, Consumed by Grief, Many Americans Just Didn't Feel Very Thankful
Thanksgiving 2023 has come and gone.
We feasted on turkey and all the trimmings. We enjoyed left overs the following day. We counted our bounty of blessings. It was a terrific Thanksgiving, just like every other Thanksgiving in my life before it.
Except for one: 1963. That year’s Thanksgiving was like no other before or since.
In November 1963, Thanksgiving pretty much didn’t happen. At all. At least not in our family, or as far as I know, in any of the families we knew.
On November 4, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the traditional presidential proclamation declaring November 28, 1963, as the official Day of Thanksgiving.
He didn’t live to see it. By 1:00 pm (CT) on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was dead, struck down by an assassin’s bullet. He would be three days in his grave on November 28, the day he had previously declared to be a day of Thanksgiving.
The assassination and the overwhelming shock and grief that followed Kennedy’s death pretty much wiped out any thought of celebrating Thanksgiving for most people that year. The holiday arrived on November 28, just six days after Kennedy’s death, and only three days after his state funeral
It pretty much passed unnoticed.
It occurs to me, at this sixtieth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination - November 22, 2023 - that the number of Americans who actually lived through that time, like the declining number of World War II veterans before us, is rapidly and steadily dwindling. The day is not long off when there won’t be many of us around to tell the story of what we saw, did and felt, during that time.
This week I want to share an aspect of that time which, my guess is, will never make it into the history books, but helps illuminate how the country - and average Iowans -were affected by Kennedy’s murder.
Many readers will have their own memories. I encourage you to share them, either in the comment section below, or at least with your younger family members. Write them down at home, too. The future needs to know. You can help it remember.
We lived on a farm just west of Van Meter in November 1963.
My younger brother, Tracy - who had just turned four in October 1963, says today that he has quite a few memories from that time. “Mostly that the whole world stopped for a week or so,” he said when I asked him about it last week. He remembers watching on TV as the funeral procession marched on foot from the White House to the funeral mass at St Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC. He remembers First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and the president’s brothers, Robert and Ted, in that procession, in particular.
He remembers watching the funeral on TV, and also Kennedy’s young son, John F. Kennedy, Jr. - at age three just a year younger than my brother - saluting his father’s coffin as it rested on the caisson outside the church.
That’s a lot of memories packed away by a then-four year old, burned in so deep that they are still within easy reach sixty years later.
My older brother, Mark - who was 14 at the time - has similar memories. When I called him to wish him a “Happy Thanksgiving” last week, the conversation, without planning, turned to the anniversary of Kennedy’s death. We talked at length about it, what we remembered from that day and the days that followed, and what it all meant to our country.
Sixty years later and here we are: a couple of old guys, without prompting, still trying to process the terrible events that happened in November 1963 - sixty years ago - when we were 14 and 10 year olds.
That’s a measure of the impact that Kennedy and that tragedy had on all of us, everywhere.
I remember the public events vividly, as well.
Like most, I was glued to the television network’s nonstop, commercial free, coverage of the assassination and its aftermath for much of the next week. Like my brothers, I remember little JFK, Jr.’s salute outside the St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and also little Caroline’s white gloved hand reaching under the flag that draped her father’s coffin for one “last touch,” as she knelt beside it in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, with her Mother.
When I worked in the Congress, I used to take Iowans on tours of the Capitol, every now and then. I’d always take them to see the catafalque on which Kennedy’s coffin rested in the Capitol Rotunda for 21 hours as 250,000 Americans filed silently by to pay their respects in November 1963. They store it in the basement, under the Rotunda.
I’d tell them about the other distinguished Americans who have lain in state on that catafalque, beginning with President Abraham Lincoln. I would also remind them of the scene that transpired at the side of the catafalque in 1963 - little Caroline’s hand reaching under the flag to touch her father’s coffin.
Everyone I ever showed it to, who saw it happen on TV in 1963, remembered that scene clearly.
I have other - more personal - memories as well.
I remember our school superintendent coming into our fifth grade class room and personally announcing to a stunned classroom that the president had been shot. School was dismissed soon after. We returned to our homes to be with our families. It was a good decision. Nobody’s mind was on arithmetic at that point anyway.
When I arrived at home, I found my Mother sitting in front of the television crying. The laundry she was starting to fold when the news arrived from Dallas, sat untouched at her feet. Through her tears, she told me the president was dead. They hadn’t told us at school that he had died - only that he’d been shot - so I tried to reassure her that he wasn’t dead.
“No, he died,” she said. “They announced it. He’s gone.”
I remember serving as the robed official candle-lighter at our local Methodist Church prayer service - open to the whole Van Meter community - on Sunday night, November 24. We prayed for the president’s soul, for the family he left behind, and for our nation. After lighting the candles, I remember being jolted at what I saw as I turned to return to my seat: I had never seen so many people - particularly grown ups, crying at the same time, in the same place, in my life.
When we returned to school, I remember asking the superintendent if I could raise the flag that flew outside in front of our school every day. He agreed.
For the next 30 days - the length of the official mourning period - I’d raise the flag to half mast every morning, step back, stand straight, and give it my best Cub Scout salute. I took it down just as solemnly at the end of every school day and carefully folded it with the help of a fellow scout, strictly according to flag etiquette.
I remember, also, writing Mrs. Kennedy a letter some weeks later. I told her that, because of President Kennedy, I had decided to go into politics and government when I grew up. If I ever became President of the United States, I added, I’d tell people that President Kennedy was my inspiration.
Which is actually pretty much how things worked out in my life.
Except for the “ever becoming President” part. That never happened. And it isn’t going to happen. But while I started out in my early career as a reporter, the bulk of my career was, indeed, in politics and government. The service and leadership of President Kennedy was always my inspiration in that work.
And, of course, I remember, too, Thanksgiving 1963. Or what there was of it. That was the year the holiday that is second only to Christmas in popularity in America came and went without notice or celebration. No one missed it.
I suppose there might have been some families that went ahead with it, but nobody I knew did.
I hope future generations remember that President Kennedy inspired millions. I hope they remember that when we lost him so suddenly and so violently, that most Americans needed that 30 day mourning period, not as a symbol of national grief, but because most needed that time - and more - to catch their breath after his assassination knocked the wind out of us.
In my own family, sixty years later, a then-four year old has vivid and clear memories of what he saw and felt in those days.
His older brothers, a 10 year old and and a 14 year old then, can still spend an unexpected 25 minutes still trying to understand, and process those terrible events from sixty years ago.
As I said earlier, none of this will make the history books.
But people 100 years from now ought to know the impact President Kennedy - and his loss - had on the country, and ordinary citizens.
As I mentioned above, you likely have memories of those days, too. Please feel free to share them in the comments section below or with family members, and - especially - write them down at home.
Please put them in a place where somebody years from now will find them.
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I was sitting in my 5th grade classroom when we heard the news about President Kennedy being shot. Two brothers in our class who arrived at school after the lunch hour told us what had happened. Many of us started to cry. We had one old black and white TV in our school and the 5th and 6th grade students had permission to watch TV it they chose to do so. My memory was that I was thinking how horrifying it was that this had happened to our President and his beautiful wife and children. At home the TV was on and we all watched every minute of the next 3 days with the images of the First Lady and Caroline kneeling at the coffin in the Rotunda, the riderless horse named Black Jack in the funeral procession, the show, steady cadence being marked by muffled drums being seared into my heart and soul. I remember "John-John" saluting the men of the military. I remember the First Lady lighting the flame at Arlington.
Our family did get together for Thanksgiving that year because I grew up in an Irish Catholic family and John Kennedy was one of us. There were no bridge games that year, no parade watching, no loud laughter; just our big Irish family crying and telling stories about the President being one of us and how proud we would always be of John Kennedy.
I remember walking into my home room From gym class and some of the girls were crying, I had heard nothing of the assination and couldn't figure out what had happened, As everyone got into the class room the teacher told us that the President had been shot and that he had passed away as a result. All in that same moment came like a bolt from out of the blue. Who would do such a thing and why? To this day I still don't feel we know the truth about either of those questions. The result of which remains, after my 73 trips around the sun, that my trust in government has been completely hollowed out from things that happened to me since; in Vietnam, the CIA wars in Central America, The capture of Noriga in Panama, the bombing of Libya, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, it seems to never end, and often is caused by fear. Fear of the unknown, the primary thing the Republicans work on to do what ever they want with us, there canon fodder. How many more "riderless horses" does it take before voters actually vote to protect Democracy? How many suicides, how many mental health beds, how many 100% disabled before we stop counting the dead and start investing in the living, breathing people of this country and not the war profiteers?