The Death of J. F. Kennedy, by Mary Kay Shartle Galotto

I was a senior at Notre Dame in Baltimore, and waiting for my then boyfriend Jack Galotto to drive up from Duke Medical School to spend the weekend. The news burst into a wonderful lazy fall afternoon, and we stood in the student lounge frozen around the TV. When Walter Cronkite told us that President Kennedy was dead, it was as personal as hearing that a close family member had died.

Jack was staying with his former roommate Michael (now Mayor) Bloomberg, who was dating my friend from NDC. When Jack arrived, he told us of driving through Washington with helicopters overhead and people out in the street abuzz with some news that he couldn't determine. His radio was broken, and he heard random snatches of news from other cars, such as a reporter going on and on about President Garfield. Finally, a cabdriver told him that the President had been assassinated. When he got to Baltimore, the four of us sat in Mike's apartment, mostly in stunned silence and in tears, as we tried to deal with incredible disbelief and waves of emotion. We had planned to go dinner and a movie- everything was closed, so Mike eventually made sandwiches, and we tried to console each other. I just remember how terrible we felt, and our complete lack of cynicism, which seems impossible today.

I believe that day was the true end of the Fifties, and the Sixties had slouched into Bethlehem. So many things died that day- and we had no idea of the terrible times ahead. When we graduated in June, Mike put the Eternal Flame on the class banner for "64.