by Donald Jeffries, “I Protest”:
I’ve described the impact that the JFK assassination had on me, as a seven year old child. My Catholic family was in mourning, as reruns of Superman, Popeye, The Little Rascals and the Three Stooges were preempted for the nonstop coverage of Kennedy lying in state and then the funeral, with a riderless horse leading the procession.
There was a somber mood over the country, and within my family’s small brick rambler. Like most Catholics, my parents were enthralled with the handsome and well-spoken John F. Kennedy, the youngest president ever elected, and the first one who shared our religion. I was as impressionable as any other kid that age, so I was enthralled with him, too. He was the first president I remember, and that dignified and articulate persona set the template for what I imagined the leader of our country was supposed to be like. Going from that to the crude and bumbling Lyndon Johnson was a culture shock that I think contributed to a national loss of confidence.
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We were driving home from Sunday mass when we heard on the radio that suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot. Even as a barely intellectually formed second grader, I realized that Jack Ruby must have shot Oswald to stop him from talking. I actually remember pontificating about this to adult relatives at the next big family gathering. No one corrected me. My father, and every other family member who discussed the subject, never accepted the official explanation for a minute. My father hated Johnson as much as he loved Kennedy, so the vice president was his chief suspect. He used to say that, during the Kennedy inaugural, Sam Rayburn told his pal LBJ, “It should have been the other way around,” in other words, that JFK had been vice president.
Now that little anecdote about Rayburn is in none of the Kennedy books. At least the ones I’ve read, and I’ve read a whole bunch of them. My father used to claim dubious knowledge about many things, but as a small child you just accept it as true. At any rate, I never once thought of Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin of JFK. My interest in the Kennedys was reignited with a passion when JFK’s brother Bobby ran for president in 1968. I followed all the primaries, and first learned the nuances of our political process as an eleven year old. I had to go to bed on the night of the California primary, but still remember shouting out, “Dad, did Bobby Kennedy win the primary” as soon as I woke up in the morning. “Yes, but he was shot,” my father replied.
We watched coverage of the shooting at school. You knew it was serious when they wheeled in a television set to every classroom. The only other time I remember them doing that was for a World Series game the previous year. Some kids were joking about RFK being shot; clearly they didn’t like him. Well, obviously, their families didn’t like him. Surely they weren’t as sophisticated as I was already, keeping score of the delegate count. There were rumors that some students, perhaps even teachers, had cheered in Texas, when news of JFK being shot was reported. I realized even then just how much emotion this family stirred up in people.
I recall hearing Frank Mankiewicz announcing that Bobby Kennedy had died, as I was playing by myself in our unfinished basement. I don’t think I cried when JFK died, but I certainly did cry for RFK. I watched the coverage of another Kennedy death on television. Andy Williams, one of RFK’s countless celebrity friends, singing a heartfelt rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic. The moving eulogy delivered by the sole remaining brother, Senator Edward Kennedy. “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were, and say why not?” Teddy’s greatest speech. Then the long train procession, with the Little League players standing with their caps across their chests. People of all kinds weeping and waving sadly.
For some reason, my father didn’t like RFK very much, but after watching that train procession, he declared that there was no doubt that he would have been elected president. I didn’t pay much attention to the political race in 1972. My father liked Ed Muskie, so I did. But then he was caught crying over some of Nixon’s supposed dirty tricks, and that was that. Things worked like that in America 1.0. There was always the hope that Teddy Kennedy would run, but he always declined, citing his family. I was rooting for him, because he was a Kennedy. Even after Chappaquiddick.
By 1975, I’d started on the path that has led me down so many rabbit holes. My mother bought me a copy of the new book They’ve Killed the President! by Robert Sam Anson, and then Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. I subsequently joined Lane’s Citizens Committee of Inquiry, where I headed the local Falls Church, Virginia chapter. We watched the Zapruder film a lot. I remember a group of us viewing it for the first time in someone’s attic. I organized a “Who Killed JFK?” presentation at my county’s central library. It was cancelled by a freakish April snow storm. When we rescheduled, it was Lane’s top aide Joe Secchio, not him, who spoke. I don’t know what happened to Secchio (not even sure of the spelling). I’ve tried to look him up without success.
We also lobbied Congress. Or tried to. No member of Congress was going to talk to some long haired teenager spouting off about the government killing Kennedy. We saw a few aides, who were predictably dismissive. Local media had no interest. I was beginning to understand that these reporters weren’t crusaders for truth, but shills for the state. We were lobbying for a congressional investigation, and the HSCA did eventually form. But it was a gigantic disappointment. I grew very disillusioned with the subject, although I continued to read new information, like David Lifton’s best seller Best Evidence. I also subscribed to Penn Jones’ The Continuing Inquiry.
Hatred of the Kennedys goes back to old Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of this huge clan. He had all the right enemies; FDR, Churchill, Truman, etc. Old Joe had been an opponent of WWI, and he joined the America First movement to oppose our entrance into WWII as well. Joe had presidential aspirations himself, and there were rumors he was going to challenge FDR in 1940. But after a mysterious closed door meeting with FDR, Joe suddenly announced he was supporting our second worst president once again. We’ll never know what was really discussed behind those closed doors. Old Joe thus began to channel his presidential aspirations into his eldest son.
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