Bye Bye Johnny

One of my earliest memories is the reflection on the tile of my parent's basement of the black and white images of John Kennedy's funeral procession. I was no more than a year and a half old at the time, but every time I see that footage, I think of that ghostly light flickering in the gloom. Then there was Martin Luther King, followed abruptly by Robert Kennedy. These were men who opened the door for my generation to make the world a better place, and they were gone before I got to know them.
There wasn't a lot for me to comprehend back in those days. Political assassination seemed almost matter of fact - our best and brightest would be taken from us tragically as a horrified nation looked on in stunned silence. "The Father, Son and The Holy Ghost" as Don McLean once suggested. In many ways, this set the stage for us to be numbed into a world that would give us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Then came December 8, 1980. I remember who told me that John Lennon had been shot: Howard Cosell. "This, we have to say it, is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City. John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous perhaps of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival." I was at the top of the stairs at my parents' house, headed to the basement. Now, at seventeen, I was finally ready to face the death of a dream.
"I can't remember if I cried
When I red about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died."