“Do you remember where you were when President Kennedy was assassinated?”

It seems to be the question everyone is asking.
Well of course I do.
I had just finished a class at my college, my sophomore year at Houghton (“HO-tin;” not “how” or “who”)
Probably in WC-5 — who knows if it still exists — in the basement of Wesley Chapel.
We headed for a back entrance under the pipe-organ, and as we ascended the short stairwell up to the outdoors, the news was madly ricocheting around campus.
It was dreary, and President Kennedy had been assassinated.
What a downer that was!
It was as if optimism had been snuffed, replaced by the stodgy conservatism of the ‘50s.
Being stridently REPUBLICAN, and anti-Catholic, it was almost as if our college celebrated his death. They didn’t know how to react.
Like he had it coming.
But we students were devastated. Our bright future had been skonked.
A bunch of my fellow-students decided to drive to Washington. I wasn’t among them.
They wanted to witness the funeral-parade for real.
Our college was anti-television. About the only way to witness history was -a) secret televisions owned by professors, or -b) drive to Washington.
My rooming-house, non-professor, had a television. I watched Oswald get shot.
So now 50 years have passed.
We warred in Vietnam and lost. It was a war Kennedy promulgated.
There also was a nuclear standoff with Russia Kennedy instigated, and we also set foot on the Moon, a Kennedy goal.
But his assassination seemed like a return to boring conformity.

• “Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.