graynation: The end of a long novel

For most people in graynation, watching Teddy Kennedy's funeral on Saturday was like reaching the end of a long novel and closing it. Kennedys have been in our consciousness since the late 1950s, when John F. Kennedy started getting national attention. His debate with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, in the fall of 1960 (I was a high school senior) was the first televised presidential debate in history.

And it was historic, because of television. "That night," wrote Russell Baker of The New York Times, "image replaced the printed word as the natural language of politics."

We didn't see near as many images of our presidents and politicians as you kids do now. What we knew of them, we read, mostly, in newspapers and magazines. The first coast-to-coast television broadcast was not until September, 1951. It showed President Harry S Truman opening the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. And it was all black-and-white. Most of our national leaders before 1970 we never once saw in color, unless they came to campaign in our town..

When I was born, a man named Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. He died in 1945 and was succeeded by his vice-president, Mr. Truman. I was 2 at the time and don't remember much about it. Truman was elected to his own presidency in 1948 and held the office until I was in fourth grade. School is where I learned that Truman's middle initial was not followed by a period.

I liked Truman, who looked like a high school principal, but my favorite president was Dwight Eisenhower, who had been a top general in World War II. He was elected in 1952. His wife was named Mamie, and she looked like she should have been married to Harry S Truman. We didn't have what you call terrorism at that time, but our huge enemy was Communist Russia. There was what they called the "Cold War" between the United States and Russia, that started right after World War II ended in 1945. So it felt good to have one of our war generals in the president's office. We worried about Russia and the Communists all the time. We had bomb drills at school, bomb shelters all over town with big yellow "CD" (Civil Defense) signs on them, and once a month (or was it twice?), the air raid sirens were tested, at noon, all over town.

Eisenhower was re-elected in 1956, the same year he signed bill that created the interstate highway system. If I had to pick one image to illustrate the difference between that graynation America of 1956, and today's America, it would be the difference between a two-lane U.S. (as all the major highways were then called) highway and a multi-lane interstate freeway. The fastest traffic in those days could go only as fast as the slowest truck, until you could find room to pass.

The new highways were also intended to make military movements quicker and easier in case we were invaded. The Cold War really got serious in October of 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik, the world's first space satellite. It was about 23 inches across and weighed 185 pounds. But it meant to Americans that the Russians could spy on us from space and launch the ominous ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) at us. We felt a little better when America put its first satellite into space in January, 1958.

The Kennedy era began with JFK's election over Nixon in 1960. At that time, the big airport in New York was called Idlewild, and the space launching complex in Florida was Cape Canaveral. We had a real scare in October, 1962, when JFK confronted Russia for its attempt to ship nuclear missiles into Cuba. The Russians backed down, and historians say it was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war.

Then, of course, JFK was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, and his brother, Robert Kennedy, was assassinated on June 5, 1968, as he was campaigning for president in California. Robert's funeral was June 8, where his brother Ted delivered a eulogy that many of us still remember, in part. "My brother need not be idealized," Ted said, "or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

The Kennedy era acquired a nickname: "Camelot," after a 1960s musical based on the King Arthur legend, whose title song included this verse: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment, that was known as Camelot." Now the last player in the graynation's Camelot is at rest. If we seem a little quiet today, that is probably why.