10-01-2013, 05:45 AM
We lived near Oxon Hill Maryland, 15 minutes from the White House. My dad no longer worked there after Eisenhower, but we were very close by for other reasons. I was
attending St. Columba Catholic School and was in first grade at the time. My teacher, Sister Mary Anne Xavier, a behemoth of a woman, who had never showed any emotion
to my knowledge was teaching something to us. The principal came to the door and opened it. She was white as a ghost--not normally--just then. She called the teacher over
and whispered something in her ear at which time our teacher's knees nearly buckled. A group of us were herded off to an underground shelter very quickly with the sounds of
the rosary being recited by the nuns who wore the oversized beads like a rope around their waists. We prayed for a time until we were picked up by parents or by military
personnel. The phone system was out. By the time my mother came to get me and my sister, she was quite anxious because she could not reach the school by phone and was
unsure of where we were being taken.
Washington D.C. was the worst city in the world that weekend with the possible exception of Dallas. It was the most solemn, depressing, gloomy, place I have ever seen to this
day. Grown men and women crying--sometimes sobbing--uncontrollably in the streets. There was a look in everyone's eyes that, now as an adult, I recognize as similar to the
look in the eyes of those who have been through great trauma, such as, survivors of Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, or Auschwitz. Utter despair.
We walked around JFK's flag draped casket in the Capitol and attended the funeral on Monday. It's like it was just yesterday ... still.
attending St. Columba Catholic School and was in first grade at the time. My teacher, Sister Mary Anne Xavier, a behemoth of a woman, who had never showed any emotion
to my knowledge was teaching something to us. The principal came to the door and opened it. She was white as a ghost--not normally--just then. She called the teacher over
and whispered something in her ear at which time our teacher's knees nearly buckled. A group of us were herded off to an underground shelter very quickly with the sounds of
the rosary being recited by the nuns who wore the oversized beads like a rope around their waists. We prayed for a time until we were picked up by parents or by military
personnel. The phone system was out. By the time my mother came to get me and my sister, she was quite anxious because she could not reach the school by phone and was
unsure of where we were being taken.
Washington D.C. was the worst city in the world that weekend with the possible exception of Dallas. It was the most solemn, depressing, gloomy, place I have ever seen to this
day. Grown men and women crying--sometimes sobbing--uncontrollably in the streets. There was a look in everyone's eyes that, now as an adult, I recognize as similar to the
look in the eyes of those who have been through great trauma, such as, survivors of Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, or Auschwitz. Utter despair.
We walked around JFK's flag draped casket in the Capitol and attended the funeral on Monday. It's like it was just yesterday ... still.
GO_SECURE
monk
"It is difficult to abolish prejudice in those bereft of ideas. The more hatred is superficial, the more it runs deep."
James Hepburn -- Farewell America (1968)
monk
"It is difficult to abolish prejudice in those bereft of ideas. The more hatred is superficial, the more it runs deep."
James Hepburn -- Farewell America (1968)