With a Gleam in My Eye

“I remember where I was when Kennedy was shot.”

That’s a line that everyone from the generation before mine says with a faraway look in their eyes. Even if they voted for “the other guy” they all remember that day in November when an assassin’s bullet killed our president. I can’t say it, because I was not even a dream in the back my young mother’s mind on that day.

We that the media calls “disaffected Generation Xers” weren’t born back then and don’t have any president’s in our memories who suffered death from the hands of crazed fanatics. Isn't it always the "crazed fanatic" who enjoys our freedom to bear arms a little too much? As a result, we all have to stretch a little to get our eyes to gleam while thinking of the leaders of our days.

Here is my short list of eye gleaming moments…

Anwar Sadat

On October 6, 1981, I was in the 6th grade at Eiber Elementary School. We had strange weather that day, strange even for weather in Colorado. The day started nice, got cloudy, dark, and eventually the sky turned a surreal shade of green.

I was in the “D” wing where we enjoyed art, bemused over science, and endured 6th grade English. I learned that day that the “D” wing had a great design flaw: the north facing walls were floor to ceiling windows. Not bad on a sunny day, but scary in a hail storm...and worse during a tornado.

I remember looking though a microscope that day and trying to figure out why the inner membrane of an egg had no cell structure. The air raid siren on top of our school went off, and Mr. Pecorelli (our oft-time brilliant yet mostly cranky teacher) ordered everyone to crawl under our tables. He brought down a small black and white television and turned on the news.

A tornado had touched down not far from our school and was making its way toward us. As if that news weren’t pressing enough for us, they local news cast was cut off by the national news service who announced that Anwar Sadat had been shot and killed during a parade in Egypt.

At the time I couldn’t even tell you who he was, what he had done, or why he was important enough to ruin a parade by killing him. That night I looked him up in my Dad’s encyclopedia set that we had just purchased. He was the president of Egypt, sought peace with Israel, and shared a Nobel Peace Prize for doing so.

I remember where I was when Anwar Sadat was shot.

Ronald Reagan

It was the hey-day of my bowling career. I, as a young 10-year-old, went from the last place team in the league in my first year of bowling fall/spring league to the 2nd place team in my second year. I credit my private coaching, lots of practice during the week, and switching teams.

On one such day, in March of 1980, I was with my Mom, brothers, and sister at Holiday Lanes getting in my practice. We bowled in the lanes just opposite from the bar, so we had access to the televisions. We were in between frames, waiting for my brother Greg to wipe down his precious ball, when all action on the bowling alley ceased.

Someone had shot Ronald Reagan while he was walking out of a hotel in Washington D.C. I knew who he was, even as a 10-year-old boy. I knew that he was the President of the United States of America. I knew that my parents had voted for him. I knew that he had only recently become president. I just didn’t know if he would live.

Of course he did live. He lived to become, arguably, the greatest president ever (in the eyes of the current GOP regime.) He somehow slept through the taint that was Iran-Contra (of course he wouldn’t need to dirty his hands with that muck.) He brought about the end of Soviet Russia (well, it made for a cool Roger Waters show at the Berlin Wall.) At least we can all agree that he had great hair (which is all that mattered in the 80’s!)

I remember where I was when Ronald Reagan was shot.