Have you ever looked back at your life and the monumental events therein? We all have the personal events–the weddings, the births, the deaths, the crises, the tragedies of life– but we also have the massive overlay of world events that occur during our lifetime. We have the endless chatter of politics, the ongoing ebb and flow of the economy, and, sadly, the never-ceasing wars and conflicts. As I look back over my own life, I see three major life-changing events, two tragedies and one totally positive. One of the measures of a truly world-changing event is that you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it occurred.
For my parents’ generation, I suspect that the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was one of those moments. Shortly after that horrific event, my father enlisted in the US Army as the United States was drawn into World War II. He also talked about jumping into his car with some friends and going to see the fiery crash of the Hindenburg in 1937. Obviously, both of these events were before my time, but I can only surmise what kind of an impact they must have had on people then.
The first earth-shaking event of my own life had to have been the assassination of President John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963. I was in college at what was then called North Texas State University before getting the loftier name of the University of North Texas. Word of the shooting of the President spread across the campus like a raging wildfire. Most professors cancelled classes that awful afternoon. Not mine! I was in a class on Greek Drama. I still remember how resentful I felt sitting in class talking about Antigone while there was such a tragedy occurring only an hour’s drive away.
Once that interminable class was finally over, Bill and I headed to Dallas to my parents’ home. He was my boyfriend and fiancée in those days. We all spent the rest of the weekend mesmerized in front of the black and white television set watching the endless news coverage of the national tragedy. All of Dallas was in stunned shock at the events. There was a collective sense of guilt that something this awful could have happened in our city.
We saw the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson as President and a short time later that sad funeral cortège in Washington with little John F. Kennedy, Jr., John John as he was called, solemnly saluting his father’s casket. When I think about Kennedy’s assassination, I am always reminded of the wonderful poem by Walt Whitman “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” that beautiful elegy he wrote for another assassinated President, Abraham Lincoln, a century earlier.
A short six years later on July 21, 1969, we had another monumental event of a much more positive nature. As Neil Armstrong stepped out on to the lunar surface at Tranquility Bay, he uttered that famous line, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” We were especially interested in the progress of the space program as Bill worked for NASA throughout his doctoral studies. His work in visual pattern recognition with a mock-up of the lunar excursion module (LEM) and a Gemini capsule right in his lab helped to contribute to that momentous day!
By chance Bill’s parents and his grandmother were visiting us that day. Once again we all huddled around a black and white television set watching live as Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. I remember Grandma Ruth asking us, “Is that real? Is he really on the moon?” Born in 1894, her lifetime spanned the original flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 and now a successful landing on the moon! That truly reflects an amazing progression for human ingenuity and accomplishment in a little over sixty years.
The third major event in our life thus far was the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon by Islamic terrorists, using our own aircraft as the vehicle for this destruction. Once again Bill and I watched in stunned shock, along with the rest of the country and the world. We had just turned on the morning news and poured a cup of coffee when the first plane hit. For several days thereafter the world saw the replays over and over again of that carnage.
I suspect that future generations will come to view this horrific day as the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century, a second Day of Infamy in US history. That attack by the Japanese forced the entry of the United States into World War II. This attack forced us into a far different kind of war which continues to this day. When my Dad entered the military in WW II, we knew who the enemy was, and fortunately the war ended four short years later. Today’s war against Islamic jihad continues with no end in sight.
Ironically, as I write this blog, it is another September 11, and as a nation we once again recall and commemorate that awful day. I saw an interesting fact on Facebook the other day. Freshmen entering high school this fall will be the first generation of high schoolers who weren’t even born when 9/11 occurred. We can only wonder what events these kids will have for the memorable world events of their lifetimes!
©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016
