First Memory Toast (JFK)

I was born in 1960 – the same year Barbie was invented and President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline created Camelot. I know Barbie was invented on purpose, but I don’t think the Kennedys set out to create a culture as if prodded by image consultants and publicists. America at the time was looking for a way to cement the American dream and the first family illustrated that ideal, especially for my family.

I look back at our family photos now and we seem like the perfect American family of the early 1960’s. My mother, a former fashion model who was always dressed to perfection, clothed her children according to the Camelot standard. Easter meant white hat and white gloves for me, a perfectly buttoned, double-breasted, Peter Pan-collared red coat over my frilly Easter dress with matching white tights and white patent leather shoes.

My two brothers were not immune from my mother’s attempt at recreating the Kennedy mystique in her own home. My older brother Geoff scowls back at me from the photograph dated “April 1964.” He is dressed in a gray suit, white shirt and black tie. His white cuffs peek out flawlessly from the impeccably tailored jacket. What struck me as funny and what may explain the scowl on his face is that atop his head is a black fedora. My brother Geoff is only 9 years old, but he looks like a character from “Death of a Salesman.”

My one-year old brother Tony was also adorned in the highest quality of fashion for 1964. Under his baby blue coat clasped by three black buttons must be one of those shorts outfits I always remember my mother dressing him in. You can see a little of one bare leg poking out from under the coat. On his head is a matching baby blue newsboy cap that covers what all young boys wore in the early 60’s: the John John haircut. Tony is the same age as John F. Kennedy, Jr. and I am the same age as Caroline Kennedy, so my mother had her ideal mannequins in place. The photograph was taken on our front lawn. Geoff and I are sitting on a white wooden bench and Tony is standing on the bench between us.  The lawn and hedges are manicured to absolute precision with not one leaf above another on the privet that graced the front of the turquoise and white ranch-style home. My mother had my father paint the house to match the turquoise color of her 1963 Thunderbird.  It appears as if everyone on suburban Long Island was trying to emulate the Kennedy’s Camelot.

Why not? Our president was young, intelligent and good looking, had a perfect family and a glamorous wife who brought grace, style and elegance to the White House. The Kennedys became America’s royal family and the people of the United States embraced this wholeheartedly. The First Family offset the tenseness of the Cold War by showing a sense of sophistication to Americans with an awareness of dress and social graces. Every housewife on Grist Mill Lane in Halesite wanted to be Jacqueline Kennedy. My mother dressed like her and wore her hair like her. Every public moment was one of Kennedy emulation.

In 1963, the day President Kennedy was shot, I was only three, but I remember I was playing outside when my best friend from next door, Patty Lankford, came running up to me and said, “are you going to make anything for the President?”

“Why?” I asked her and she told me he had been shot. I went into the house and found my mother in the den. The canister vacuum cleaner was running, with its long handle lying on the floor sucking at nothing but the air around it. My mother was sitting on the couch in front of the blaring black and white television.  Her face was in her hands and she was crying. Her teased and sprayed Jackie Kennedy-like hairstyle was bobbing up and down to the rhythm of her tears.

Initial word came over the television at 1:40 P.M. EST when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite broke into As the World Turns with a voiceover announcement over a graphic: “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” A few minutes later, Cronkite appeared on the screen from CBS’s New York newsroom to anchor live reports from Dallas and read news updates from the Associated Press and CBS Radio. It was a day that changed America forever.

When I look at the photograph dated five months after President Kennedy’s assassination, I realize that despite his death, America did not want to give up on Camelot. My mother would continue to dress us to perfection for every major holiday and the Kennedy mystique would live on in the house on Grist Mill Lane.