Friday's Faces from the Past: The McGinnis Family Portrait

Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis (1858 - 1940)
Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Francis Eugene McGinnis (1891 - 1961)
John Charles McGinnis (1894 - 1944)
Alice Gaffney (McGinnis) Schiavon (1895 - 1963)

Some time during the late 1930s, the now-adult McGinnis children: Benita, Alice (my maternal grandmother), Gene, and John, gathered at the family home at 8336 Drexel Avenue in Chicago, Illinois,  with their mother, Mary Jane, for a family portrait.

The McGinnis family in the living room of the family
home at 8336 Drexel Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.  
 Clockwise, left to right: Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon,

Eugene, John, Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, 

and Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis.  Circa 1936 - 1939.

As far as I can tell, this was their last portrait together.  Diminutive matriarch Mary Jane died on July 13, 1940.  By early 1963, Benita, the eldest, was left, her two brothers and sister having preceded her in death and leaving her to succeed their mother as the head of the now-extended family.  

As with another photograph of the family at Sunday dinner in the same home, this picture resonates with me because of its uncanny similarity to the living room in the first home my husband and I owned, in San Jose, California.  Just by looking at this photo, I know the half-height bookcase was one of two that sat under small windows and framed a simple yet elegant Craftsman-style fireplace.  

We did not have a similar decorative screen in our own front window, however. I suspect the  photographer might have placed the one in the picture there for aesthetic purposes, to block out the street view and not distract from the subjects. I wish I'd done something like that when we took pictures in the same spot in our own family home so many years later!
  
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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Thankful Thursday: A Passion for Creating

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

When my  great-aunt Detty, or Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, was born 125 years ago this week (September 30, 1889) in Conneaut, Ohio, I doubt her parents had any idea their daughter would be so passionate about the arts and making her mark on the world.

But that is exactly the way she was all her life. Considering that she lived in an era when society expected a woman to defer to husband and family and home, often putting off her own life dreams, she was unafraid to be her own person and  had her own ideas about how she should develop her talents and accomplishments.

The late 1930s and 1940s saw her broaden her interests as she proved she was not only an accomplished painter and short story writer but also a published playwright and songwriter.

In an earlier blog post, we read a 1937 letter to Benita from The Jewel Tea Company, thanking her for the use of a short story for their commercial Christmas cards.  During that same year, she wrote the lyrics and melody for a musical, "Gingham Apron Strings."  The musical is on file in the Library of Congress and features five rather jaunty songs.  I have not yet been able to obtain copies of the script or the lyrics to the songs (whose titles appear below), but it is easy imagine that their theme and lyrics were as spunky and spirited as their author:

Quick as a Wink

Ha, Ha, I'm Laughing at You

Rumble, Rumble, Rumble

You May Part Your Hair in the Middle

Let's Go to Town on a Waltz

This article, from an unidentified
newspaper (possibly the Chicago
Tribune?) was written sometime
during World War II.  The
original clipping still resides in
Benita McCormick's scrapbook.

Benita adored her mother for her tender qualities and homemaking talents, but she was not the "domestic goddess" her mother was. Nor, for that matter, did she want to be.  In this regard, she was rather like her younger sister (my maternal grandmother) Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon, eschewing the idea of  being homemakers in favor of being artists and businesswomen.  They likely inherited their streak of independence from their father, Thomas Eugene McGinnis, and their five maternal aunts, four of whom were working women and never married.  

Choosing to not stay at home was an unpopular choice for  women in the years leading up to World War II. Indeed, many people at the time believed that women should have no choice in the matter at all.  Despite the passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, it was still considered "unnatural" for women to pursue work or interests outside the home.

Thankfully for us, Benita McCormick was not one to be deterred by what others thought or said, and she followed her heart's passion, creating thoughtful and sometimes provocative works throughout her life.

This 1940s clipping from an unidentified newspaper in Aunt Detty's scrapbook of memories, tells of her unique contribution to the morale of soldiers in the Second World War:

During World War I, when every one was knitting for the Red Cross, Mrs. Benita McCormick, 8032 Vernon avenue (sic), wasn't.  She couldn't.  She made several vain attempts and gave up the idea.  For her part tho (sic), she painted and gave to the Red Cross a poster which they used quite extensively. 

Now, in World War II, Mrs. McCormick still can't knit.  Her contribution this time is a song, "You're an American, 'n' that Means Free."  It's being readied for publication now.  She got the idea for the song when she saw movies at the battle of the Midway.  She was much impressed with two young anti-aircraft fighters who were shown briefly, and remarked later, "We'll surely win with boys with Plymouth Rock chins like that."  That provided the inspiration for her song, and it has a line, too, about the "Plymouth Rock chin." 

Mrs. McCormick is a former member of the motion picture censor board, and is now secretary of the Delphian society.

Benita was one of those fortunate people in the world who was not only talented but figured out how to make her passions work for others and for her.  In a future post, we will learn more about this side of her from yet another newspaper account about the accomplishments of this fascinating lady who was at her happiest when engaging in the world in her own unique way.

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Not-So-Wordless Wednesday: It's All Relative

Phillip Eugene "Bud" McCormick (1927 - 2004)
Benita Jane "Janie" (McCormick) Olson 
                                                          (1927 - 2011)
Joan (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 - 1987)

My great-aunt "Detty," or Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, and her younger sister (my grandmother, Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon), lived several blocks apart on the South side of Chicago, both from each other and from their mother, Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis.  Their children - my mother, Joan Schiavon, her brother Tom (Thomas Schiavon), and Jane and Buddy McCormick, played together happily most days.  

Usually, my uncle Tom, ever the bookworm, kept to his inventions and scientific experiments, while my mother, Joan, was a tomboy and usually played outdoors with Buddy and his best friend, Jack O'Brien.   Jane, on the other hand, was more ladylike, preferring books and dolls to climbing trees and catching bugs.  They also acted in a children's play, Darby and Joan, at the Medinah Chidren's Theater in downtown Chicago.  

This photograph, taken in about 1931, during the height of the Great Depression, must have brought many a smile to Benita, Alice; their husbands Phil McCormick and Ralph Schiavon; and their extended families. Jane and Bud look to be about five or six years old here, while my mother would have been about four.  

Nothing is cuter than small children, except maybe small children with small animals. One can easily imagine people who desperately needed to make money to feed their own children, bringing their domestic animals up and down residential streets, perhaps borrowing cameras, and offering souvenir snapshots to those who answered the door.  

My mother, Joan Schiavon, and her cousins Jane and Bud McCormick, pose
on a billy goat and cart.  Chicago, Illinois, circa 1931.

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Sentimental Sunday: Not About to Let Her Get Away

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip C. McCormick (1892 - 1981)

Phil McCormick had found someone special in Benita McGinnis, and he was not about to let her get away.  

On June 20, 1921, he went downtown to a diamond importer, August Rassweiler, where he selected a diamond engagement and wedding ring for his intended bride.  He paid $271.00 dollars for the set, equivalent to about $3,200 today.  The couple would later playfully dub the venerable gem, nearly a carat in weight, "San Dimmo," or Saint Diamond.

Receipt for the San Dimmo diamond engagement and wedding ring set, sold to Phillip Columbus McCormick on June 20, 1921.
From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

Either that day or shortly afterward, Phillip proposed to the 31-year-old Benita.  She gladly accepted.  Soon afterward, Phil invited Benita's family to celebrate their engagement at their future residence at 1435 Midway Plaisance, near the University of Chicago.  It was a happy occasion, as the photograph below shows the beaming McGinnises dressed in their best Sunday clothes. Though Benita's brothers Gene and John are not in the picture, her maternal uncle and aunt, Thomas and Cora (Terrill) Gaffney and daughter (her cousin), Agnes, were there, along with her parents Thomas and Mary Jane, and her sister Alice.

Left to right, back row: Thomas Charles and Cora (Terrill) Gaffney, Phillip
McCormick, Benita McGinnis, Alice McGinnis,; center row: Thomas and
Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis;  front row: Agnes Elizabeth Gaffney and unknown girl.  Circa late June 1921; taken in the back yard of the engaged couple's home-to-be at 1435 Midway Plaisance, Chicago, Illinois.

Some four months later, Thomas and Mary Jane McGinnis proudly announced their daughter's marriage to Phil McCormick on Monday, October 3, 1921, in Chicago: 

Announcement by Thomas and Mary Jane (Gaffney)
McGinnis to friends and family of the marriage of
their daughter, Benita, to Phillip McCormick.

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Eugene McGinnis

announce the marriage of their daughter

Benita Elizabeth

to Mr. Phillip C. McCormick

on Monday, October the third

One thousand nine hundred and twenty-one

Chicago, Illinois

At Home
after November the first
1435 Midway Plaisance

   

The happy couple:  Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Columbus McCormick,
on their wedding day, October 3, 1921, in front of the
bride's family home, 8052 Vernon Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Awkward Family Photo

The Thomas and Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis Family


What was going on in this picture? 

The best photos are sometimes the awkward ones, the ones that went slightly wrong and no one did what they were "supposed" to do.

The time would have been about 1920 or so.  Imagine the McGinnises, sitting comfortably at the table after dinner one Sunday evening and engrossed in conversation, when someone apparently had an idea to capture the moment. 

Clearly, not all were amused. 

Here are some possible captions for this photo:

"That's right, we won the right to vote!"

"But we've never been to a speakeasy!"

"Next year, let's all wear matching t-shirts."

Left to right, back row:  Edith (Hoag) McGinnis, Thomas and Mary Jane Gaffney)McGinnis, Eileen Kelly; front row:  Benita, John and Alice McGinnis.  Photo
may have been taken by Eugene McGinnis, one of the McGinnis siblings.
McGinnis family home, 8336 Drexel Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, between 1919 - 1921.
From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

Come on, readers.  What do you think the caption should be?

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Sentimental Sunday: Sunday Dinner

Making Memories Around the Table

Left to right:  John Charles McGinnis Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis, Alice
McGinnis, Thomas Eugene McGinnis, (John's wife) Edith (Hoag) McGinnis,
cousin  Eileen Kelly, and Benita McGinnis.  Photo taken at the McGinnis home,
8336 Drexel Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, sometime between 1914 and 1920.

Like many a family in the early twentieth century, my maternal McGinnis ancestors reserved Sundays for family gatherings and dinners.  It was a ritual, understood by all that no matter what everyone did during the rest of the week, they came together at the family home on Sunday afternoons.  

It was the weekly after dinner custom of Thomas and Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis and their children Benita, Eugene, John, and Alice, to linger for hours into the evening to tell stories, read aloud correspondence from far-away relatives, share personal news of the week, and debate politics. 

Extended family and other guests were always welcome. More often than not, my great-grandfather, Thomas, held the room spellbound as he recounted dramatic stories of his adventures around the world while he was a merchant sailor on the high seas. 

Someone must have told a joke right before this picture was taken, because everyone is smiling or laughing, seemingly unaware of the camera.  The exception is Eileen Kelly, a cousin, who is looking at the photographer.  We can surmise that the person taking the picture was a member of the group, as a chair has obviously been pulled away from a place setting at the end of the table.  My guess is that it was my great-uncle Gene, who is missing from this picture.  

I will never forget the first time I really looked at this image.  It was in the mid-1990s, and my husband, our three small children, and I were living in a tiny 1925 Spanish bungalow, our very first home.  It was well after midnight, and despite having tucked our three children into bed, washed the dishes, and started a load of laundry, I was still wide awake. I pulled out my scrapbooking supplies and some old family photos and sat down at the dining room table.  

When I came to this picture, I stared at it in disbelief.  Except for the McGinnises, it could have been taken in our very own dining room.  It had the same built-in buffet and the same large window to the left of the table. Looking at the door next to the buffet, I knew it led to the McGinnises' kitchen, just like ours.  And I was certain that there was a large opening into the living room, right about where the photographer would have stood.  

I thought back to when we bought our house, when something about it that I could not pinpoint seemed oddly familiar, and I knew I wanted to live there right away. It was quaint but looked nothing like any of the homes I had lived in, except that it had a breakfast nook that reminded me of the one in my childhood home in Chicago.  Despite living far away in California, I felt an inexplicable closeness to my ancestors in that house.

Left to right:  Erin, Kevin, Charles, Welner "Bing," Patricia (Fay), Michael,
and Linda (Huesca) Tully.  Photo taken by Gilbert Huesca, at the Tully home,
San Jose, California, in November 1996.

That evening, as I studied the photo of the McGinnises and another of them from roughly the same time, I understood.  Though my great-grandparents' home had been a Craftsman bungalow, its interior design and floor plan was roughly the same as our little house, even down to the built-in furnishings in the dining room, living room, and kitchen.  The funny thing was that as far as I know, I have never been there.

I framed that old photograph and kept it on our buffet in our look-alike dining room while we lived there, next to a similar, more recent photo of us at our own Sunday dinner, some 70 years later.  

We no longer live in that house, but to this day when I see the pictures, I can still hear the laughter of our families as they meld together through time and tradition, the stories still as earnest, the news just as urgent, the political debates just as fervent, and the laughter around the table still hearty and memorable.  

Surely some day, our children will think of these as the good old days.

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Friday's Faces from the Past: More Irish Mystery Cousins

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick
          (1889 - 1984)

"Baby Maureen" is the only person we can (partially) identify
 in these pictures.  Here she is, with (possibly) her parents and another man.
Might her mother be cousin Bessie Quinn?

More Mystery Cousins!  As with the other photographs we've seen recently on this blog, these come from my great-aunt Detty's (Benita McGinnis McCormick) scrapbook pages of her 1913 visit to Ireland.  She had a grand time on the "auld sod," visiting with her Irish cousins, and these photographs show they were quite a playful lot.

As with the other photographs we've seen recently on this blog, these come from my great-aunt Detty's (Benita McGinnis McCormick) scrapbook pages of her 1913 visit to Ireland.  She had a grand time on the "auld sod," visiting with her Irish cousins, and these photographs show they were quite a playful lot.

Unidentified cousins with Baby Maureen.  The man holding
her may be her father.  The man in the cap appears to be
younger - maybe her older brother?

Unfortunately, as we have seen already, Aunt Detty unwittingly left it to us to figure out just who these lovely people were by not leaving us any identifying information about them.

Our family's Irish ancestor surnames were McGinnis, Healey, Kelly, Gaffney, and Quinn. Because Benita's father, Thomas Eugene McGinnis, lost his parents when he was a small child, he might not have known much about his relatives in Ireland (where his father is said to be born) or in Scotland (his mother's birthplace, according to some census records). For this reason, I would be less inclined to think any of these people were McGinnises, though I would not rule it out entirely.

Aunt Detty captioned this, "Baby Maureen and Nurse."
Was the nurse a nanny, or one of the nurses from
Mountjoy Prison hospital?

I know nothing about the Healeys and the Kellys, except that they are ancestors of the Gaffneys and the Quinns, respectively. As noted previously, we have a picture of Benita's cousin, Eileen Kelly, with the McGinnis family in their Chicago home in 1919.  

I am fairly certain Eileen traveled with Benita to Europe, as her name appears on the ship's manifest back to America. Hence, we have another hint that the Gaffney-McGinnis family kept ties with their Kelly relatives in the U.S. and maybe back in Ireland.  That could make the Kelly branch another possibility for these pictures, though Eileen will have to await her turn patiently while I try to confirm her family connection at a later date.  So many relatives, so little time!

While Benita's father's family seems a remote possibility for the "surname photo match game" we are playing with these unidentified photos, her mother's (Mary Jane Gaffney) family might be more likely candidates. Take her maternal grandfather's side, the Gaffneys, for example. Most, if not all, of Benita's Irish grand uncles and grand aunts had settled in the midwest and kept close contact with one another.  It would make sense that they also kept their ties to their extended family back in Ireland.

Benita's maternal grandmother's family, the Quinns, pose a stronger possibility.  Take a look at the picture postcard below  This postcard did not belong to Aunt Detty but to her younger sister, Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon, my maternal grandmother.

Picture Postcard of "Grandpa" Quinn and Lilly the old driving horse.
The location, somewhere in Ireland, is unknown.

The dedication on the back of this postcard reads, 

This is Grandpa Quinn

and his old driving

horse Lilly.

Alice don't

you remember

Lilly?

I will put

an X on the

horse's blanket.

We are all well.

Hope your the same.

Your loving cousin

Bessie Quinn - 

Write soon

Like Aunt Detty, note that Bessie Quinn does not mention "Grandpa's" first name!  The dedication leaves no room for an address or postage stamp.  The vintage of the picture is similar to Aunt Detty's photos of her trip to Ireland in 1913.  This suggests that the card was either mailed to my grandmother in an envelope or hand-delivered by her sister when she returned from Europe. In either case, the postcard provides evidence that the American Gaffney-McGinnis clan and the Irish Quinns stayed in touch.

Cousins?  

Now take a look at Lilly the horse. She resembles the horse in the other pictures here.  The carts in the pictures all look alike, too.  

Yes, it's a long shot, but could we infer from these pictures that these people are cousins from the Quinn branch of the family?  

And we haven't even talked about location.

We know the cousin who worked at Mountjoy Prison probably lived in or near Dublin.  We also know that Bridget Quinn, Benita's maternal grandmother, was said to be from Boyle in County Roscommon.  But the two places are about 100 miles apart, leaving the location anybody's guess.

Cherubic Baby Maureen and nurse.

With these theories in mind, let's have a further look at these charming photographs, particularly of those with Baby Maureen.

The women in these pictures seem to be several years apart.  Based on the style of her hair and colorful clothing, I would guess that the woman in the very first picture at top, sitting with the baby in a bale of hay, might be Maureen's mother.  The pose is quite charming with  the umbrella suggesting she was protecting her baby and herself from the rays of the summer sun overhead.

It would seem that the man behind her might be Maureen's father, especially as he appears in the picture right after that, this time holding the baby in the horse cart.

Maureen's "nurse" wears her hair down, suggesting she is a young unmarried woman.  I wonder if she is a nanny or one of the nurses from the hospital at Mountjoy Prison?  Or was there no relation at all between these cousins and the cousin who worked as "chief" of the prison?

Don't you just love a good mystery?

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Did you know Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, or are you a member of the McGinnis, Gaffney, Quinn, Kelly, Healey, McCormick, or Schiavon families? Share your memories and comments below. 

Traveling Tuesday: Benita Goes to Europe

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick
          (1889 - 1984)

Benita McGinnis, about 24 years old, on the
Cunard ocean liner R.M.S. Franconia, 1913.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I look at these photos of my great-aunt Benita in Europe and realize they were taken exactly 100 years ago.

After finishing her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, Benita's parents, Thomas and Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis, sent her to France and Ireland to enrich her appreciation of art and her Irish heritage.  

Benita had long been fascinated by her father's stories of his travels around the world as a youth. Thomas McGinnis, who was orphaned at a young age, had run away to sea to become a sailor, seeing much of the world before settling down as a family man.  He and Mary Jane spent long hours with Benita, planning her trip and writing to their Irish relatives of her impending arrival.

As respectable young women of that era did not travel alone, she went accompanied by her friend Katharine Cronican, and possibly with a cousin, Eileen Kelly (whose name appears on the ship's manifest on the way back home). 

Eileen Kelly, Chicago,
Illinois, about 1919.

This is a photograph of Eileen Kelly, taken with the McGinnis-Gaffney family at their Drexel Avenue home.  Though I do not have any information to corroborate her family relationship yet, I believe she may be related through Mary Jane's maternal line.

I am unable to determine when the three young women departed for Europe, but I know they returned to the United States through Boston on the Cunard liner, the R.M.S. Franconia.  They could have been away for as short as the summer of 1913 or as long as a couple of years.

Benita McGinnis, center, in white blouse; Katharine Cronican is to her right,
wearing sunglasses.  The other passengers are unidentified.  1913.

Benita's scrapbook is crammed with small 2" x 3" photographs of her days on ship.  Here, she and Katharine hold court with some of their fellow passengers.  It is hard to tell whether Eileen is in this group.

Katherine F. Cronican

We have limited information about Katharine Cronican. From what I can tell on Ancestry.com, she was born on August 11, 1885, in Valparaiso, Indiana.  Her 1910 passport application indicates that she was a teacher living in Chicago who planned to spend two years abroad.  A couple of years after returning to Chicago, she married Joseph Marcinkevich, a Russian immigrant who was a soft drink manufacturer.  The 1920 U.S. Census lists them as living on East 72nd Street, living with two sons.  

A couple of years later, Benita and her family would buy a house around the corner on South Vernon Avenue.  It would be nice to think the two families continued their friendship through the years, with  Benita and Katharine reminiscing about their adventures as young Americans in early 20th century Europe.

A defining moment in young Benita's life, this would be the first of her many trips around the world.

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Did you know Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, or are you a member of the McGinnis or McCormick families? Share your memories and comments below.

The Day JFK Was Shot

I was a third grader at Saint Philip Neri Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, when the principal’s voice came over the public address system, announcing that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  She asked all the classes to stop what they were doing and join in prayer for our president.  It was just after 10:30 in the morning, exactly 50 years ago today.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons, roberthuffstutter

For a split second, everyone in our class froze in confusion and disbelief.  Our teacher, Mrs. Tormey, was the first to cry, and the rest of us followed.  The door was open, and we could hear similar outbursts from the neighboring classrooms.  

It took a few seconds before we realized that the principal was still on the P.A., praying the Rosary. We joined in and prayed for John F. Kennedy with all our hearts.

My memory of the next half hour or so is more blurry than the beginning.  The teachers must have been as confused as anyone as to what to do next.  I think there was another announcement, because the teachers brought all the students into the corridor.  There they instructed us to sit on the floor against the walls, as we continued to pray.  This was not unusual to us, as we were accustomed to sitting in the long corridors during tornado warnings and air raid drills. 

The P.A. system stayed on as Sister led us through our prayers, the faint sound of a news broadcast playing in the background. When she broke the news to us that President Kennedy had died, the hall erupted into a chorus of sobs, and we were dismissed for the day.  My little sister and I walked the three blocks home to find our mother glued to the TV set in the living room, crying her eyes out.  She took our hands and led us to the couch, where we all sat down to watch as CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite bravely announced the breaking developments.

I and others my age learned a new and sad vocabulary over the next several days.  Bulletin.  Assassination.  Motorcade. Grassy Knoll. Secret Service. Texas Book Depository. Suspect. Tragedy. Tarmac. Air Force One. Swearing-in. Lying-in-state. Rotunda. State funeral.  Caisson. Taps. Eternal Flame.  We learned new names, too:  John Connolly.  Lee Harvey Oswald.  Jack Ruby.

1963 had been a year of sad losses for me.  It began when my adored Nana – my maternal grandmother Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon, died in the early hours of New Year’s Day.  Six months later, on June 3, Pope John XXIII died.  In my childlike way, I had loved him because he looked kind and grandfatherly and was as close to God as anyone could get. And then we lost our young and vibrant president on that sunny day in November.  My innocent eight-year-old mind could not comprehend any of it.

That evening, overwhelmed by all that had happened that day, I went into the kitchen to be with my mother while she cooked dinner.  I leaned against the refrigerator and stared into space.  The world had suddenly become dark and confusing, and my face felt hot as tears streamed down my cheeks.  “Mommy,” I said somberly, “three people I love died this year:  Nana, the Pope, and President Kennedy. I think my heart is broken.”

My sweet mother turned from the sink and took me in her arms.  There was nothing she could say at that moment.  We just hugged each other, knowing the world would never again be the same.

I think most people felt the same way. In fact, on that day, the immediacy of television for the first time ever brought history right into our living rooms and connected us through tragedy.  No matter who you were or where you were in the world when JFK was assassinated, you were right there - with him, with Jackie and Caroline and John-John, with Lyndon Johnson and all the rest. 

It was a violent day in our history, and Americans of all ages wondered if and how we could go on, but we did.  Perhaps we survived because we believed Kennedy when he said we were "not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sure future.  For the world is changing.  The old era is ending.  The old ways will not do."  

From the depths of darkness came flickers of light as people young and old sought to do good and carry out his vision to better the world. It took time, but we healed, albeit with scars, thanks to the legacy of hope and aspiration and service that JFK had instilled in us during his three short years as president.

As I remember where I was on November 22, 1963, I also remember where I was on July 20, 1969. I had just turned 14. Six years had passed since JFK's death, and our family and millions of others across the globe once again gathered around our television sets.  

This time, the occasion was marked by joy and anticipation. My parents halted their wallpapering project and called my sisters and me to watch as astronaut Neil Armstrong landed Apollo 11 on the moon, fulfilling John F. Kennedy's pledge that the United States would make a moon landing by the end of the decade.  As Armstrong stepped down from the lunar module onto the moon's rocky surface, we cheered triumphantly, for his achievement, for our nation, and for our late president.

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Where were you when JFK was shot?  Share your memories and comments below.