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Friday, November 22, 1963
It started out serious and somber in the gymnasium today when Brother Cyril, our principal,
led all of the students and teachers in a prayer for Joey Moreno.
Then “Syrup” (that’s Maria Popaluski’s nickname for Brother Cyril) read a passage
from the journal of the original St. Abacus and it concluded with this statment:
Death has no respect for youth.
After he said that, there was total silence in our gymnasium. Nobody made a sound
for about thirty seconds which is nearly impossible when you have a large group
of teenagers together but Death had just pulled a black card out of his sleeve.
Then Brother Syrup, who never did anything weird before, shrieked in a hallelujah voice...
Joey, we’re gonna win this game for you!
And so began the first pep rally ever at St. Abacus. We were officially ready to celebrate
the first basketball game of a brand new and experimental Catholic High School.
Once our prayers were over, all of the
Firsts knew that Hallelujah Jesus would definitely
root root root for our team.
Especially when Brother Syrup pointed to the heavens and shouted like a madman.
You’re in God’s press box, Joey Moreno.
Keep a good score for our team!
The whole school went crazy with noise and a few boys made loud fart sounds cuz that
is what Joey would have really wanted. I whistled louder than everybody
but at least one hundred of my classmates will say the same thing.
Every player on the “varsity” basketball team was introduced by Coach Sniply
through a megaphone accompanied by a drumroll and gym wall-to-wall applause.
The players’ heights and hometowns were mentioned as cheerleaders
kicked and pompomed us into a big frenzy.
It was another “beyond Boss” moment!
Pete La Mantia, 5’ 11” from Queens Village
Lenny King, 5’ 9” from Bayside
...
Etruscan K. Jefferson, 6' 7" from Flushing
Every crazy teenager at St. Abacus’ (of which I am proudly one) went extra fun-crazy
with our teachers leading the way after the Principal had struck a match under our insanity.
To say “fun-crazy teenager” is redundant but if you said “fun-crazy adult”
that seems like an impossibility unless you got a weird uncle or neighbor.
Speaking of fun-crazy adults, Sister Mary Margarine, the fabled
Red, spun all over the floor
with her nun’s habit blowing up in the air while dribbling a ball and shooting it on a bulls-eye
right into the basket.
She could have shot it over Wilt Chamberlain!
The geeky and gawky Alfred Scmidt was in the middle of the gym floor
dressed in an Archbishop Molloy Spartans uniform and all our players
threw balls at him and knocked him down over and over again.
Alfred was geeky and gawky and acrobatic and funnier than Hell on a holiday.
For an hour if it got any louder in that gymnasium, the walls would have come down.
Red measured the scene accurately:
“What a pissah and a half!”
And then all the lights went out.
We all thought it was part of the celebration but quite the opposite was true.
After about five minutes, something else went out: our voices.
Brother Syrup, who just moments ago, was in the middle of the celebration,
was no longer in the gymnasium. He was on the public address system
and his voice sounded like a bucket of black paint got poured over it.
We must stop our pep rally immediately.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was just ass-assinated in Dallas, Texas.
Tonight’s basketball game against Archbishop Molloy has been cancelled.
Everyone return to their classrooms immediately in an orderly and timely manner.
We did exactly that and Brother Nester, our social studies and homeroom teacher wrote on the blackboard.
Joey Moreno 1949 -1963
John Kennedy 1917 -1963
You know all that noise I was just telling you about?
It pulled an incredible disappearing act. Poof!
A new set of emotions took over our skin.
Grief and fear and confusion filled our faces where joy had just been.
Death is a vicious thief worse than the Mafia or Russia. First, Death steals one of our own classmates.
But that wasn’t enough. Now, he’s taken our Catholic family jewel, John. F. Kennedy, the most handsome
President in the history of the United States of America.
Who killed him and why?
Was it someone who hated Catholics?
Was it Castro or Khruschev?
Where will they drop the bombs?
We were not given any further details by the Principal or our teachers.
Brother Syrup dismissed the whole school at 2:59 instead of 3:15.
Nobody was cheering the early dismassal and the pep rally seemed like it happened centuries ago.
What basketball game aren’t we going to tonight?
We were told to go straight home but we needed information.
Assassination was a word that had only existed in history books.
And now the LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD was dead and no student had a radio.
There are payphones right outside of the school and the first kid who called home was told
by a frantic mother that “Some evil communists killed the President after they crossed
the border from Mexico into Texas. There’s going to be an invasion!”
Maria Popaluski (I gave her the nickname “Mary Pops” but that’s not important now) had some dimes
and we were gonna call our parents but Rita Conners’ screamed
“Let’s get home as fast as possible. The Russians can drop a nuke while we are standing
in front of these stupid phones.”
Mary Pops didn’t go to the hardware store and we didn’t walk three blocks like we usually do.
We didn’t walk, we ran to the first bus parked across the street from the school.
We got dismissed fifteen minutes early but tHe city busses were lined up like a funeral procession
because that is how the limousines park outside of Gleason’s Funeral Parlor in Whitestone.
The busses were empty but not for long. Three LadyBugs and what felt like a thousand other students
squeezed into a
Q76 city bus that had signs over the front and back doors that read
“Occupant Capacity–52 people.”
Everybody’s leaning toward the front because the bus driver had a radio.
The death of our classmate shocked everyone at my school but compounded
a need to go into celebration overdrive at the pep rally.
And now the killing of our President sucked all the fun and excitement
out of everyone. But at least we were alive.
Not one student said a word on that bus. Again, a large group of teenagers were silenced
but this time we were on a bus. Even if one of us kids wanted to say something,
there wasn’t any room to move your mouth but our ears were open pretty wide.
Walter Cronkite came on the radio and said that they already caught the assassin.
His name was Lee Harvey Oswald. He was captured in a movie theateR just blocks away
from where he assassinated Johnny Kennedy, the youngest President (elected at age 43)
in the history of the United States.
Walter Cronkite also said that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the World War II hero of PT 109,
was the first President to be born in the Twentieth Century.
Probably, (this was my own thought) he was the youngest President to die in office
since JFK was in the White house for less than three years.
Death has no respect for youth.
And Joey Moreno was the youngest student to die while attending St. Abacus High School.
Walter Cronkite didn’t say that. I did. It was OK to talk again after we got off the bus.
Rita and Maria came over my house and called their mothers to let them know where they were.
Maria was saying that Jackie Kennedy could move into her finished basement
if she needed a place to stay.
God bless my Mother.
She gave us bowls of lemon chiffon ice cream which we sprinkled with tears as we watched
Walter Cronkite on television.
Oswald is certifiably crazy enough to kill the President of the United States...
But he did it entirely on his own...There was no help or involvement from Kruschev or Castro...
Lee Harvey Oswald is a lone nut who sat with a high-powered rifle on the sixth-floor
of the Texas Book Depository less than two hours ago and gunned down John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
the thirty-fifth President of the United States.
How did they know who Oswald knew or didn’t know so fast?
I’ll tell you how.
All you had to do was look at Oswald when the police took him in to jail.
The LadyBugs watched him on the console Zenith television in the Manicotti living room.
Oddball Oswald was real crazed with his eyes popping out of his head and pleas of innocence
umping out of his face. He claimed that he was set up.
“I’m just a patsy! I’m just a patsy!”
But he didn’t look Irish. He just looked like a wormy little sicko-psycho.
When Brother Syrup was acting crazy like a madman today that was an adult having fun
during a pep rally that now seemed like it happened in another universe.
Oswald’s type of crazy is killer-crazy. In police custody, he acted like a headless chicken
in a cartoon but scary instead of funny.
I think that if Nikita Khruschev, leader of the communist world, had any self-respect,
he would have nothing to do with this Lee Harvey Insane Oswald.
Fidel Castro would blow cigar smoke at this headless chicken and then eat him for lunch.
I’m sure that Lee Only Oswald was a “lone nut,” just like Walter Cronkite said.
If voices could have the ring of truth to it, then the voice of Walter Cronkite was the gong of Truth.
After words came out of Walter Kronkite’s mouth, they are as solid as stone.
(Mary Pops calls him “Walter Concrete” But I can’t play anymore games with names right now.)
Oh Dearest Dee,
Forgive me
Future breeds doubt
When I am diaried out.
This day started ten thousand words ago and I have no more thoughts to share.
There are no more LadyBugs at my house. No more Jackie and Johnny in the White House.
No more lemon chiffon ice cream.
But lots of tears and fears and confusions.
And you saw all the question marks.
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Footnote
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF 1963 is the copyrighted property of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.
Tina Manicotti's diary entry for 11/24/63 is
here.
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