The Kennedy Assassination, the Media and My Generation

Everyone who was older than, say, five, on November 22, 1963 has a story that begins, “On the day that Kennedy was shot, I…”   Those too young to remember it have filed away Kennedy’s murder in their minds along with other national tragedies: the assassination of President Lincoln, the Hindenburg disaster, Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Titanic, the San Francisco earthquake.

But the Kennedy assassination was different.  And the effect of that weekend in 1963 on the baby boomer generation is still being measured.

When President Lincoln was assassinated, some Americans in the far West didn’t learn the news until months later.  In 1963, Americans turned en masse for the first time to their television for breaking news of a national tragedy, and that news was very slow in coming—it seemed like hours of agonized waiting before the official announcement was made that the President was indeed dead, (although the back of his head had been blown off by the second shot, and his wife and his bodyguard knew instantly there was no hope.)

The entire nation gathered in front of their television sets, sat down, and didn’t move from Friday through Sunday as they watched the drama play out in real time, from the shots in Dallas, through the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby, through the funeral procession, with the rider-less horse and three-year-old John John saluting his father’s casket.

Imagine if the Kennedy shooting happened today—hundreds of people in Dallas would have captured it on video via their cell phones—not just Abraham Zapruder, with his 8 millimeter Bell & Howell movie camera and the shaky 486 frames of film that would ultimately ruin his life.  The nation did not see the entire 26.6 seconds of the Zapruder film until 1975, and Life Magazine, which bought the rights to it for $150,000, did not show frame #313— Kennedy’s head exploding—out of deference to the family and its readers and because Zapruder insisted it be withheld.

Today (remember the Boston Marathon bombing?) the entire event would be on Facebook and Twitter from dozens of different angles, with all the gore, along with all kinds of crazy theories and misinformation—within seconds of the gunfire.

There was nothing instantaneous about the news in those days.   Here’s my Nov. 22, 1963 story:  Two months earlier I had moved to Manhattan from California to enter Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.  Among the 80 grad students who sat in front of their heavy manual typewriters at desks in the J School’s newsroom was Nick Gage, the man I would marry seven years later, but on that Friday I had a date with another young man, who worked for The New York Times, to attend a ball given by the Newswomen’s Club of New York to collect my Anne O’Hare McCormick scholarship, which would help pay for my tuition.

I had left the newsroom early and gone to my dorm room in Johnson Hall to start getting ready, when I heard on the radio “Shots have been fired in the vicinity of the President in Dallas.” 

Like many of my fellow J School students I immediately went back to the school, hoping to get more information from the teletype machines in the newsroom—the only way to get breaking news in those days before it was read over the radio.  The teletype machines, standing about three feet high, would clatter into life as news bulletins from the Associated Press, UPI and Reuters (they each had a different machine) would be typed on a continuous roll of paper.

We stood around, grim-faced, waiting to learn Kennedy’s fate, tearing off bulletins as they came through (I still have a couple, one of them pictured above.) Not until 2:33 p.m. Eastern Standard Time did the teletype machine make it official.  The president was dead.

We all took this as a personal loss.  Nick, who has been my husband now for 43 years, had met President Kennedy only three months earlier at the White House, when Kennedy presented him with the top Hearst Award for college journalism—which was how Nick managed to afford grad school.

After the official news, we were all depressed and at a loss for what to do next. Everything had been cancelled.  Earlier I had tried to call my date at The New York Times to tell him the ball was cancelled and got screamed at by the man who answered the phone, who yelled, “My god, woman.  Don’t you know what has happened?  Hang up!”

Finally, as a group, we walked over to a movie theater on Broadway and sat silently through a film.  It was “The Haunting of Hill House” starring Julie Harris.

We all went out to the West End Bar after that, and Nick and I spent the rest of the weekend together, devouring the newspapers as succeeding editions came out. Unlike the rest of the nation, we did not have access to a television set (although there must have been one at the J-School.)  Nowadays, the students sit down to their computers.  The manual typewriters and teletype machines are long gone.

Over the years, when anyone asks us, “How did you two meet?” we take turns telling the story, beginning, “It was the day President Kennedy was shot.”

Three weekends ago, Nick and I were in San Francisco, attending the Elios Foundation’s Hellenic Charity Ball when we started chatting with California Congressman John Garamendi and his wife Patti, who have been married even longer than we have.  Turns out that they met the same day we did. 

They were both attending the University of California at Berkeley (where I had graduated five months earlier.)  He was on the California Golden Bears football team (and an All-America offensive guard), but the game scheduled for that night was cancelled, so John walked over to visit a girl he knew in a sorority house, and she introduced him to a pretty blonde named Patricia. 

Like so many of our generation, John and Patti had been inspired by Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps. They spent their two-year honeymoon serving in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, teaching local school children that if they could work together, they could achieve anything (including building a bridge). John has devoted his life to legislature creating a pathway to the middle class for poor Americans.  Patti has served as the Associate Director of the Peace Corps and arranges the distribution of American food and aid to famine and refugee centers in war zones and developing countries.

Everyone in my generation has a story about how Kennedy’s life and death affected them, and in many cases, the ripple effect is still being felt.  For my generation, it was the first time the nation pulled together and mourned together as a family, while the now-outdated medium of television made us participants in the drama.   

New Technology Helps with Eldercare—It’s Not Just Robots

Last May I posted an essay titled:  “Do You Want to End Your Days Talking to a Robot?”  It was my reaction to a New York Times article that described new robots with cute names that have been created to take care of elderly patients.  There’s Cody, allegedly “gentle enough to bathe elderly patients”, HERB who can fetch household objects, Hector, who reminds patients to take their medicines, Paro, who looks like a baby seal and calms patients with dementia, and PR2 who can blink and giggle as people interact with it.   Reading this evoked in me the same reaction as that of Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, who said she was troubled when she saw a 76-year-old woman telling her life story to the baby seal robot. “Giving old people robots to talk to,” said Prof. Turkle, “is a dystopian view that is being classified as utopian.”

Since writing that blog post, I’ve learned about some new technological developments that are showing positive results in treating patients, without eliminating the human link in healthcare for the elderly, who will number 72.1 million Americans by 2030—double today’s number (which already includes me—I’m about to turn 73.).

One of the encouraging developments is the Betty Tablet (which also has a cute name—in honor of the inventor’s 93-year old mother-in-law.)  Robert Nascenzi, president and CEO of NLIVEN Solutions, saw that home caregivers treating his elderly mother-in-law, Betty, were trying to communicate her needs and activities to each other with an over-stuffed and unorganized three-ring binder and post-it notes stuck to cabinets: “Betty has an infection, make sure she takes her antibiotic.” 

So Nascenzi developed the Betty tablet.  When a home health caregiver checks into a patient’s home, she can tap information about the patient into the tablet, describing what the patient ate, what activity he/she did, the patient’s mood, any problems, medicines administered, doctors’ appointments-- information which is transmitted in real time to the patient’s doctor and all family members who are subscribers to the plan.  They can receive this information with a smartphone application, or as text or e-mail messages.  (In addition to tapping, the tablet understands written messages or even voice recognition.) Subscribers can also respond and send private messages to agency staff through the Betty web portal.  This way a patient’s children can keep daily track of their elderly parents, no matter how far away, and a continuous record of the patient’s condition and care plan is created.

Jeff Salter, the founder and CEO of Caring Senior Service, is presently testing the Betty tablet with some of his clients and caregivers in San Antonio, Corpus Christi and McAllen, Texas.  Salter, a 42-year-old Texan, founded his company in 1991 to assist the elderly in their home with daily needs like bathing, dressing, errand running, housekeeping and meal preparation   Franchises for his company have now spread to 700 clients in 17 states.  The cost of a caregiver’s visit is between $18 to $25 an hour, depending on the distance the caregiver has to travel. If the Betty tablets prove effective, Salter plans to extend their use to all his clients.

Keeping an eye open for tech developments that help the elderly, I saw that the University of California at San Francisco reported on a study that shows the aging brain can increase in vigor and cognitive ability given the right mental exercise, and that video games can be a powerful help. (The study also said that—who would guess it ?—the biggest decline in cognitive ability happens between the 20s and 30s, but continues throughout life.) The study used a 3-D video game called NeuroRacer. (I suspect this would help me improve my driving, as well.)  The test subjects played the game for an hour a day, three days a week, for a month, and showed a “dramatic improvement” after only 12 hours of play.

The San Francisco findings seem to be validated by Teresa Heinz Kerry, 75, wife of Secretary of State John Kerry, who announced in late October that she is steadily recovering from a seizure that she suffered in July—the result of a fall that caused a concussion four years ago—and that the brain game app for iPad called Lumosity played a big part.  “I have a great feeling of gratitude in my heart that my brain is still working, “ she said.

A couple of new tech inventions that I read about in last Sunday’s New York Times, were designed to protect children who are too young to use a smart phone, but I couldn’t help thinking they might be useful for elderly people with dementia as well.   Both devices  use GPS, Wi-Fi and other location-tracking technology  to find lost children, and can be linked to apps on a parent’s phone. One is a watch from Filip Technologies which tracks a child’s location and lets him get voice calls from up to five people who are looking for him. The watch also has a red panic button, which will dial the parents or people in charge when the child pushes it.

The second tracking device for small children mentioned by The Times is the Trax, which works with the parents’ smart phone application to alert them if a child wanders outside a digital fence which the parents can draw on their smartphone.  And if the child is lost within a store, the Trax uses motion and direction sensors to determine the child’s position. (The Trax can also be used on dogs, and certainly would be useful for elders with dementia who are able to wander away.)

It’s reassuring to know that new technical tools are being developed to aid us senior citizens.  I’ve never played a video game in my life, but I reckon it’s time to learn.  It’s certainly better than ending my days telling my life story to a robot that looks like a baby seal.

True Ghost Stories: Reagan's White House Ghost

It wouldn't be Halloween if I didn't re-post  my favorite White House ghost story which I heard right from the lips of President Reagan back in 1986.

Ever since the White House was first occupied in 1800, there have been rumors of hauntings, but I got this story direct from the President. No, not President Obama. I first heard about the White House ghosts directly from the lips of Ronald Reagan.

It was March 18, 1986, and my husband Nick and I had been invited to a state dinner in honor of Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The State Dining room was filled with gold candlesticks, gold vermeil flatware and vermeil bowls filled with red and white tulips. I had the great privilege of being seated at the President’s table along with Chicago Bears’ running back Walter Payton; the Canadian Prime Minister’s wife Mila Mulroney; the president of the Mobil Corporation; Donna Marella Agnelli, wife of the chairman of Fiat; Burl Osborne, the editor of the Dallas Morning News, and Pat Buckley, wife of William Buckley.

The President, a brilliant storyteller, entertained the table throughout the meal and the story I remember best was about his encounters with the White House ghostly spirits. Here is how I wrote it later in an article about the dinner for the Ladies’ Home Journal: “According to the President, Rex, the King Charles Cavalier spaniel who had recently replaced Lucky as First Dog, had twice barked frantically in the Lincoln Bedroom and then backed out and refused to set foot over the threshold. And another evening, while the Reagans were watching TV in their room, Rex stood up on his hind legs, pointed his nose at the ceiling and began barking at something invisible overhead. To their amazement, the dog walked around the room, barking at the ceiling.

'I started thinking about it,' the President continued, 'And I began to wonder if the dog was responding to an electric signal too high-pitched for human ears, perhaps beamed toward the White House by a foreign embassy. I asked my staff to look into it.'

The President laughed and said, 'I might as well tell you the rest. A member of our family [he meant his daughter Maureen] and her husband always stay in the Lincoln Bedroom when they visit the White House. Some time ago the husband woke up and saw a transparent figure standing at the bedroom window looking out. Then it turned and disappeared. His wife teased him mercilessly about it for a month. Then, when they were here recently, she woke up one morning and saw the same figure standing at the window looking out. She could see the trees right through it. Again it turned and disappeared."

After that White House dinner, I did some research and discovered that half a dozen presidents and as many first ladies have reported ghostly happenings in the White House. It’s not just the ghost of Lincoln that they see, although he tops the hit parade. He caused Winston Churchill, who was coming out of the bathroom naked but for a cigar when he encountered Lincoln, to refuse to sleep there again. And Abe so startled Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands that she fell into a dead faint when she heard a knock on the door and opened it to find Lincoln standing there.

I also learned that the Lincoln bedroom was not a bedroom when Lincoln was President—it was his Cabinet Room where he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

It’s well known that Abraham Lincoln and his wife held séances in the White House, attempting to contact the spirit of their son Willie, who died there and who has been seen walking the halls.

The ghost of Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, appeared often in the Rose Garden, which she planted. There is even reportedly a Demon Cat in the White House basement that is rarely seen. When it does appear, it is foretelling a national disaster. While the Demon Cat may at first look like a harmless kitten, it grows in size and evil the closer one gets. A White House guard saw it a week before the stock market crash of 1929 and it was also reportedly seen before Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

Abigail Adams’ ghost has been seen hanging laundry in the East Room—she appeared frequently during the Taft administration and as late as 2002 and is often accompanied by the smell of laundry soap.

Lincoln himself told his wife he dreamt of his own assassination three days before it actually happened. Calvin Coolidge’s wife reported seeing Lincoln’s ghost standing at a window of the Oval Office, hands clasped behind his back gazing out the window (just as Reagan’s daughter saw a figure in a similar pose.) Franklin Roosevelt’s valet ran screaming from the White House after seeing Lincoln’s ghost . Eleanor Roosevelt, Ladybird Johnson and Gerald Ford’s daughter Susan all sensed Lincoln’s presence near the fireplace in the Lincoln Bedroom.

I’d love to find out if the Obamas have encountered any ghostly knockings, or if their dog Beau has suffered the same alarming anxiety attacks as Reagan’s dog Rex. Tomorrow, as the portals between this world and the other world swing open, I suspect the White House will be hosting a ghostly gala of the illustrious dead.

(If you have any  personal paranormal experiences to report, let me know about them at: joanpgage@yahoo.com )

Halloween Decor--Grins & Gore in Grafton

Living in our picturesque New England village of Grafton, MA, I usually make my Halloween decorations from the traditional pumpkins, gourds and cornstalks purchased at one of our local farms, like Nourse Farm in Westborough, which has been owned by the same family for 300 years, ever since their ancestor, Rebecca Nurse, was accused of being a witch and her sons left Salem, one of them settling here.

But Halloween decor brings out a stunning level of creativity and talent in our little village--for instance, in this Colonial mansion, right down the road (Rte 140) from us, which houses Bergeron Creative Studios and its leading creators, Al Bergeron and  Dara King.  Every season I eagerly await their latest brainstorm.  This year's Halloween house produced giant pumpkins.

 Last year's was all about giant spiders.  Whatever they do, their decor stops traffic and evokes honks of approval during the rush hour.

Further up Route 140 is a humble Xtramart Convenience store, but one of its employees, a young woman named Missy Vassar, so loves decorating that she turns the place into a veritable museum every season, using her own props, and her talent creates folk art, especially at Halloween.  But she doesn't forget that the store is there to sell, well, convenient products.

Inside there's a ghastly couple in the middle of the Halloween candy.

And three skeletons flying over the automobile products.

A one-eyed witch stirs up trouble by the Hefty bags.

A purple witch is pushing Pepsi.

A large spider hangs out in the frozen food.

The Queen of Halloween threatens.

A floating wizard has a soda can in one hand and a spider in the other.

An elaborate multi-level haunted cave has a skeleton Mariachi band which echoes all the Mexican skeletons I have on my Day of the Dead altar in my kitchen.

Last weekend I wasn't able to attend the Eco-Tarium's fabulous Great Pumpkin Fest, which includes  maybe 1,500 cleverly carved jack o'lanterns, but I'm reposting some of the designs from last year, for those of you who want to carve presidential pumpkins.

The jack-o-lantern I carved last week for Amalia (way too early!) has now turned to pumpkin mush, but by next Thursday I'll have made the porch into a haunted room full of bats and spider webs and hands reaching out of bowls of treats and a witch who pops out of a jack o'lantern cackling.

Two-year-old granddaughter Amalia, who's celebrating Halloween in Manhattan this year, refuses to put on any costume--it's all too SCARY--much less enter the Grafton Xtra Mart.  But wait till next year!

Amalia in the Pumpkin Patch

Last week on Tuesday, while her Mommy was starting her new job at Martha Stewart's Weddings Magazine in Manhattan, Amalia and her grandma, Yiayia Joanie, made cupcakes to surprise Mommy, because it was her birthday.

Amalia put all the sprinkles on the cupcakes by herself, and she cleaned up all the extra sprinkles that fell off, by eating them.

When Mommy came home from work with her friends, everyone enjoyed the cupcakes and  Mommy blew out the candles and the grown-ups drank champagne.

Then on Thursday, Amalia and her Mommy and her Papou Nick and Yiayia Joanie drove to Grafton, MA where Mommy was appearing at a book event for the Worcester Public Library.

When she got to Yiayia and Papou's house, the first thing Amalia had to do was to have tea on the porch with Yiayia's dolls, Molly and Victoria.

Then she had to feed the fish in the fishpond with Yiayia Nene.

On Friday everyone went with Amalia to the Pumpkin Patch at Tsougas Family Farm in Northboro.
The pressure was on.  How would Amalia ever be able to choose the perfect pumpkin from so many pumpkins?

She would just have to start at the beginning and look at every pumpkin.

She would take Mommy along to advise her.

Look!  There's a green one.  That's intriguingly different.

In the end, Amalia told her Mommy that she liked the baby pumpkins best, because she could carry them.

Amalia made her final decision--Here's her favorite pumpkin in the whole pumpkin patch.

Don't look now, Yiayia Joanie, but there are two creepy guys following us.

Nearby Tsougas Farm, we stopped at Davidian Brothers Farm where Yiayia Joanie chose a big pumpkin that she could carve for the house, and Yiayia Nene posed with the biggest pumpkin yet.

That night, as Yiayia Joanie carved the big pumpkin, (Amalia had requested a happy face, instead of a scary or sad face), Auntie Frosso read her a book about Halloween.

When she was asked if she'd like to touch the "gooey stuff" (she calls it "gluey stuff"), Amalia said politely, "Please, no! No thank you!"

When the pumpkin was all carved, we got out a flashlight to see what it would look like in the dark on Halloween.

Amalia decided that, after a strenuous day of making decisions, the best thing about Halloween was not picking the pumpkin, but playing with the flashlight.

Angels and a Menage å Trois in the Cemetery

As predicted in my previous post, I spent  Friday photographing in Rural Cemetery, Worcester (MA) as a participant in the Worcester Art Museum's class "Exploring Photography at Rural Cemetery",  taught by my friend Mari Seder.

 

It was really fun, despite the rain which followed us all day, alternating between a mist and a downpour. Then we went back to the Museum where Mari reviewed and critiqued our photos.  Even though we were all photographing in the same place, each of us focussed on different aspects of the cemetery.  One woman, who is a civil engineer, found wonderful geometric compositions in small architectural details and shadows and corners of stones.  Another concentrated on the beautiful trees and foliage, leaves and flowers.  And I discovered  that my obsession with the human form showed up in nearly all my photos--either with inclusion of my fellow photographers or the angels and cherubs that I found in the cemetery.  (If you come to my house you'll discover I've been collecting angels for ages.)

I thought this looked like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel but when I got up close I learned it was the mausoleum of Inventor George Crompton.

 And it has quite a few cherubs, each with a different face and attitude.

This one was my favorite (below.)

We all circled this lovely (if battle-scarred) angel erected by the Gorham family.

I photographed her from all angles.

This one (below) I called a guardian angel. He is directing this departed soul toward Heaven.

But our attention turned from angels to scandal when we took shelter from the rain in the door of the Greek-temple-like mausoleum below.

The name over the door was "Kennedy" and here's the story, as reported in Rural Cemetery's "Guide and Walking Map" brochure-- a tale told with delightfully antiquated euphemisms:

"Ellen 'Nellie' F. Rogers and Walter G. S. Kennedy were married at ages 67 and 63 respectively. They then adopted Mr. Kennedy's 'chum' Charles A. Williams, a former piano salesman who was age 45 at the time, as their 'son'.  It was the stir of Worcester society to have such an event! We have one of the richest women in Worcester marrying a music teacher and adopting the comrade of Mr. Kennedy's...Nellie Rogers, the daughter of an old and wealthy Worcester family, lost her father at a young age and was left in a peculiar situation as a result.  She and her mother could enjoy the interest only of Mr. Roger's vast estate and only upon the death of one of them could the other inherit the fortune of the estate.

"Nellie and Walter traveled  the same social circles for nearly a quarter of a century before their friendship ripened into greater intimacy until one day she packed her trunks, 'took the family silver' and moved to Sicily with Walter and Charles in tow.  There she purchased a villa on the Sorrento Bay and she and Walter married in France.  On the day old Mrs. Rogers got word of the events, she passed away and left Nellie, Walter and Charles to inherit the fortune!  Rural Cemetery has benefitted from this fortune with the erection of the Ellen Rogers Kennedy Memorial Chapel in 1930."

After reading this, we peered with renewed interest into the holes in the locked metal doors of the Kennedy Mausoleum.

Peering even closer, we could make out the stained glass window and the sentiments carved  into the wall.  On one side:

"Death is not departure but arrival

Not falling asleep but waking."

And on the other:  

"It is life which is the night

And death is daybreak."

And by poking a camera through a hole to photograph the interior, we discovered a tantalizing mystery: There were only two crypts inside the mausoleum, leaving us wondering which of the scandalous threesome sleep inside, and in what order?

This is just one of the many mysteries that lie beneath the marble and slate stones of Rural Cemetery in Worcester.