Rene
Patrick: Formative Impressions In The '60s
I was born in 1961. My parents were liberals who, like so many other Americans, felt great hope at that time under the leadership of John F. Kennedy. I witnessed his assassination.
My "formative years" were coloured and textured with sights, sounds and feelings of the devastation wrought by the President's assassination, and the additional trauma of the deaths of his brother and Dr. King, not long thereafter. Growing up listening to the Beatles on the radio, under the shadow of the grief which my parents -- and so much of the community -- remained spellbound with, I could not help but become a product of a chapter of American history which I had entered at the end of a period of post-war prosperity, and which suddenly took a turn toward disillusionment, and grief. My father continues to avoid presentations which feature the Kennedy family, so deep is his wound from that time. I carry, along with my father, a scar not yet healed from those years of my infancy: To this day, each time I hear the melody of "What the World Needs Now...," or I see that footage of Jack or Robert Kennedy, I instantly and spontaneously cry, as though re-living an early childhood trauma. After only two or three years of this life, I could not have understood the impact these great figures would have on our culture; I lived in a world of sensations and emotions. So, the impressions of television programs interrupted by breaking news broadcasts of hopes and dreams suddenly dashed, became forever fused with the abiding grief and sorrow which would characterise my mom's and dad's days, months and years as they did their best to cope with their mixed feelings of hope for me, and dismay with their new world.
I was born in 1961. My parents were liberals who, like so many other Americans, felt great hope at that time under the leadership of John F. Kennedy. I witnessed his assassination.
My "formative years" were coloured and textured with sights, sounds and feelings of the devastation wrought by the President's assassination, and the additional trauma of the deaths of his brother and Dr. King, not long thereafter. Growing up listening to the Beatles on the radio, under the shadow of the grief which my parents -- and so much of the community -- remained spellbound with, I could not help but become a product of a chapter of American history which I had entered at the end of a period of post-war prosperity, and which suddenly took a turn toward disillusionment, and grief. My father continues to avoid presentations which feature the Kennedy family, so deep is his wound from that time. I carry, along with my father, a scar not yet healed from those years of my infancy: To this day, each time I hear the melody of "What the World Needs Now...," or I see that footage of Jack or Robert Kennedy, I instantly and spontaneously cry, as though re-living an early childhood trauma. After only two or three years of this life, I could not have understood the impact these great figures would have on our culture; I lived in a world of sensations and emotions. So, the impressions of television programs interrupted by breaking news broadcasts of hopes and dreams suddenly dashed, became forever fused with the abiding grief and sorrow which would characterise my mom's and dad's days, months and years as they did their best to cope with their mixed feelings of hope for me, and dismay with their new world.
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