Before this weekend is behind us... I have memories to share...
My father, Joseph H. McCann, was a JFK appointee, and President Kennedy was a figure of great respect in our household. This is a photo of my father's appointment as administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway, signed by the president and Secretary of State Dean Rusk...
My parents attended JFK's inauguration and The Ball. I still have the program and the tickets. Even to a child my age, something momentous was happening in the world.
Then everything changed. I had never seen adults cry...
I was a student in a Catholic school in Detroit at the time of the assassination. We were in gym when the announcement was made over the PA system. We knelt and prayed for a very long time before school was dismissed early.
I vividly remember telling my friends that I wouldn't be coming back to school again because... "My father's boss has been killed..."
Of course the next week was filled with the horror of the assassination replayed - ad nauseum - on TV.
Another memory, albeit a much happier and more wondrous one, happened years later in 1990 in New York...
Our very dear friend, Paul Winfield, called and asked us to join him at the New York premiere of his new film Presumed Innocent at the screening room of the Museum of Modern Art. We arrived early, which allowed us to gawk (subtly) at the celebrities as they entered... Harrison Ford, Sydney Pollack, Bonnie Bedelia, Raul Julia, Brian Dennehy, John Spencer, Lee Grant, Roy Scheider, Carl Bernstein, Issac Stern, Kevin Kline, Dominick Dunne, Peter Jennings, Marlo Thomas, Phil Donahue (and so many more!) came into the room. Everybody was chattering away...
And then it happened. The entire room went silent! We looked around to see why...
In walked Jacqueline Kennedy on Arthur Schlesinger's arm.
An entire screening room full of stars looked on in awe as she entered. I've never seen anything like it.
I realize this has nothing to do with food.