“What you don’t learn from your
mother, you learn from the world” is a saying I once heard from the
Masai tribe in Kenya. By the fall of 1960, my world was expanding and so
were my political sensibilities. John E Kennedy won the presidential
election, to my father’s consternation. He supported Vice President
Richard M. Nixon, and my eighthgrade social studies teacher, Mr. Kenvin,
did too. Mr. Kenvin came to school the day after the election and
showed us bruises he claimed he had gotten when he tried to question the
activities of the Democratic machine’s poll watchers at his voting
precinct in Chicago on Election Day. Betsy Johnson and I were outraged
by his stories, which reinforced my father’s belief that Mayor Richard
J. Daley’s creative vote counting had won the election for President-Elect Kennedy.

A few days later, Betsy heard about a group of
Republicans asking for volunteers to check voter lists against addresses
to uncover vote fraud. Betsy and I decided to participate.We knew our
parents would never give us permission, so we didn’t ask. The turnout
must have been less than expected. We were each handed a stack of voter
registration lists and assigned to different teams who, we were told,
would drive us to our destinations, drop us off and pick us up a few
hours later.Betsy and I separated and went off with total strangers. I
ended up with a couple who drove me to the South Side, dropped me off in
a poor neighborhood and told me to knock on doors and ask people
their names so I could compare them with registration lists to find
evidence to overturn the election. Off I went, fearless and stupid. I
did find a vacant lot that was listed as the address for about a dozen
alleged voters. I woke up a lot of people who stumbled to the door or
yelled at me to go away.When I finished, I stood on the corner waiting
to be picked up, happy that I’d ferreted out proof of my father’s
contention that “Daley stole the election for Kennedy.”

Of course, when I returned home and told my father where I had been, he
went nuts. It was bad enough to go downtown without an adult, but to go
to the South Side alone sent him into a yelling fit. And besides, he
said, Kennedy was going to be President whether we liked it or not.It’s a
cliché now, but my high school in the early 1960s resembled the movie
Grease or the television show Happy Days. I became President of
the local fan club for Fabian, a teen idol, which consisted of me and
two other girls. Paul McCartney was my favorite Beatle. Years later,
when I met icons from my youth,like Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
Mick Jagger, I didn’t know whether to shake hands or jump up and down squealing. All, however, was not okay during my high school years. I was sitting in geometry class on November 22, 1963, puzzling over one of Mr. Craddock’s problems, when another teacher came to tell us President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The halls were silent as thousands of students walked in
disbelief and denial to the school auditorium.

Finally, our principal came in and said we would be dismissed early.When I got home, I found my mother in front of the television set watching Walter
Cronkite. Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had died at 1 P.M.
CST. She confessed that she had voted for Kennedy and felt so sorry for
his wife and children. So did I.I also felt sorry for our country and I
wanted to help in some way, although I had no idea how.