{"id":2821,"date":"2014-11-22T21:46:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T04:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=2821"},"modified":"2014-11-22T21:46:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-23T04:46:46","slug":"john-kennedy-barack-obama-2-inaugurations-and-2-generations-of-dreamers-redux-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/22\/john-kennedy-barack-obama-2-inaugurations-and-2-generations-of-dreamers-redux-2\/","title":{"rendered":"John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"JFK<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

I wrote this piece right before the Obama Inauguration. \u00a0This, the 51st anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, seems like a good day to share it again.<\/em><\/p>\n

I seem to be living in the\u00a0WayBack<\/a>\u00a0Machine<\/a>\u00a0this year.\u00a0\u00a0Lots<\/a>\u00a0of<\/a>\u00a0memories<\/a>of<\/a>\u00a01968<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0even 1963<\/a>.\u00a0 Now as January 20, 2009 approaches,\u00a0yet another<\/a>looms.\u00a0 January 20, certainly, but in 1961.<\/p>\n

See that crowd?\u00a0 Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother.\u00a0 Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt\u00a0a blizzard’s worth of snow<\/a>on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.<\/p>\n

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy.\u00a0 And Jackie.\u00a0 And Caroline.\u00a0 And all the other Kennedys who came with them.\u00a0 Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled\u00a0 back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters.\u00a0 I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets.\u00a0 My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived around dawn Inauguration morning.\u00a0 We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy\u00a0ordered their integration<\/a>soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.<\/p>\n

It was very cold.\u00a0 We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled.\u00a0 Which I was.\u00a0\u00a0 As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander in Chief.<\/p>\n

That was half a century ago.\u00a0 I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory.\u00a0 It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me.\u00a0 I was such a kid \u2013 they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time.\u00a0 (Of course there was no next time.) \u00a0 Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history.\u00a0 And showed me that my political commitment had value \u2013 enough value to merit such an adventure.<\/p>\n

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) \u2013 without those memories.\u00a0 If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did)\u00a0 If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.)\u00a0 I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own.\u00a0 So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.<\/p>\n

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises\u00a0“those with little children”<\/a>\u00a0to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right.* \u00a0But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come.\u00a0 After all, he’s\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0guy.\u00a0 What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours.\u00a0 Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them \u2013 at least that \u2013 and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens \u2013 as Americans \u2013 for the rest of their lives.\u00a0 Oh \u2014 and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change the world.<\/p>\n

*I know, I thought of Christina-Taylor Greene as I re-read this too.<\/p>\n

This post also appears in\u00a0PunditMom’s Mothers of Intention: How Women & Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this piece right before the Obama Inauguration. \u00a0This, the 51st anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, seems like a good day to share it again. I seem to be living in the\u00a0WayBack\u00a0Machine\u00a0this year.\u00a0\u00a0Lots\u00a0of\u00a0memoriesof\u00a01968\u00a0and\u00a0even 1963.\u00a0 Now as January 20, 2009 approaches,\u00a0yet anotherlooms.\u00a0 January 20, certainly, but in 1961. See that crowd?\u00a0 Somewhere, way in the … Continue reading John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,27,1917,9,97],"tags":[2129,286,279,90,289,1467,280,21],"class_list":["post-2821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-nablopomo","category-politics","category-television","tag-american-history","tag-assassination","tag-barack-obama","tag-history","tag-inauguration","tag-jfk","tag-john-kennedy","tag-politics-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-Jv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2821"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3711,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2821\/revisions\/3711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}