Our website hosting service regularly offers up a number of questions to consider and post on our sites. My approach to this website has been to offer up useful information without adding personal commentary and I tend to write in the third person. I’m trying to change and this months challenge subject asks:
What major historical events do you remember?
I’ve been alive now for over three-quarters of a century, so I have a number of events to consider. Today I’ll offer up a half dozen, but I reserve the right to add more in the future. So here goes:
The Assassination of President Kennedy
I was living in the D.C. suburbs of Virginia and was in my junior year of high school. On November 24, 1963 a little after noon the school principle came on the PA system to announce that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas Texas. School was let out early and I drove to pick up my mother, who had MS, from the school where she taught. I don’t remember much until that evening when I took a bus into Washington alone.
I went to the Capitol and got in line and walked by the casket at around 2:00 AM. President Kennedy was laying in state in the Capitol Rotunda until the funeral procession up Pennsylvania Avenue. Staying in Washington I was standing at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to watch the funeral procession as it passed by. The funeral was attended by world leaders and other dignitaries as it marched up Pennsylvania Avenue.
Two things stand out in my memory; there was a ceremonial riderless horse behind the casket and the soldier that held its reins was having a lot of trouble controlling the animal as it was constantly rearing up. Second, right behind the riderless horse were ranks of dignitaries and in the lead rank walked General Charles de Gaulle of France standing about 6’6″ next to Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia standing 5′”4″. Both in uniform all decked out with medals and those two walking together were a very odd sight.
Later that week I remember learning that two of our neighbors were in Dallas. Col. Bill Barnes was pilot of Air Force One and he appears in the photograph of Lyndon Johnson being sworn in inside the plane. Mr. Youngblood, who lived across the street and next door to Col. Barnes was Secret Service and he was the agent that dove over the trunk of the car when the shots were fired and covered up VP Johnson.
The Attack on the USS Liberty
8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War my Navy ship was tied up in Souda Bay Crete having off loaded cargo. Suddenly we got orders to immediately set sail and steam at full speed towards Israel to offer assistance to a ship that had been attacked. Oddly it was the same hull class as ours, and was named the USS Liberty. We were the second U.S. ship to reach her and she was full of holes from aircraft cannon fire but still flying the American flag from her mast. We came along side and provided medical assistance and transferred 34 bodies and 18 wounded to our ship for transport back to Naples, Italy.
The Capture of the USS Pueblo
On 23 January 1968 my ship was at a pier in Barcelona, Spain when we heard about the Pueblo. We were half a world away but it also was the same hull class ship as ours and the USS Liberty. Since we were all utility ships we were very lightly armed and between those two incidents along with two recent run ins with Soviet ships at sea trying to ram into us it was beginning to look as if U.S. ships at sea in international waters were becoming dangerous places to be.
The Moon Landing
July 20, 1969 found me home ready to get out of the Navy and start attending college. That day, like most of the world, found us glued to our televisions. I don’t think that I have ever felt more proud to be an American nor believed that as a person there wasn’t anything we couldn’t achieve. It truly was “a great leap for mankind”.
The Challenger Disaster
Over the years I had done some work for NASA, mainly in photography (technical stuff) and had even attended the night launch of Apollo 14. By January 28, 1986 I was living in South Florida and working for myself. That morning, with my infant son in a backpack I entered the post office to check our box. On the radio in the car I had listened to the countdown for the launch of a space shuttle and made a note that I could probably see the shuttle’s contrail in a few minutes. The front doors of the post office faced directly north and as I exited there was a strange cloud in the sky directly ahead. I went straight up from the ground some distance and then branched off like a tree with contrail branches going off in several directions. Back in the car I sat stunned and listened to the news of the disaster as it unfolded.
The 9/11 Attacks
I had been on a business trip to Charlotte, North Carolina and on that morning I had packed my suitcase and headed to the lobby to check out. In the lobby there were several people standing and watching television. Going over I saw one of the New York Twin Towers with smoke billowing out of its side and someone said it was a plane accident. In just another minute or two the live television image clearly showed another plane fly directly into the other tower.
I went back to my room and called my wife and told her to turn on the television and that I would call her back shortly. After a short time I learned that airports everywhere were being closed. I drove over toward Charlotte airport and the roads had already been barricaded with police cars everywhere.
A couple of hours later after checking with Avis about my rental car I checked out of the hotel and started driving south. Late that evening I arrived in Ft. Lauderdale and drove to the airport where I was directed to park in a field with hundreds of other cars, turned over the keys and contract to a representative and went home.
The Intentional Travelers 