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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
Boom!: Voices of the
Sixties
by Tom Brokaw
Random House - November
2007
Boom!:
Voices of the Sixties
In 1962, I had an entry-level
reporter's job at an Omaha television
station. I had bargained to get a salary
of one hundred dollars a week, because I
didn't feel I could tell Meredith's doctor
father I was making less. Meredith, who
had a superior college record, couldn't
find any work because, as one personnel
director after another told her, "You're a
young bride. If we hire you, you'll just
get pregnant before long and want
maternity leave."
In retrospect, the political and
cultural climate in the early Sixties
seems both a time of innocence and also
like a sultry, still summer day in the
Midwest: an unsettling calm before a
ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was
not yet an American war. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. was confronting racism in the
South and getting a good deal of exposure
on The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC and
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite,
the two primary network newscasts, each
just fifteen minutes long.
In the fall of 1963, first CBS and
then, shortly after, NBC expanded those
signature news broadcasts to a half hour.
As a sign of the importance of the
expansion, Cronkite and Huntley and
Brinkley were granted lengthy exclusive
interviews with President Kennedy. ABC
wouldn't be a player in the news major
leagues until the 1970s, when Roone
Arledge brought to ABC News the energy and
programming approach he had applied to ABC
Sports. Kennedy, America's first truly
telegenic president, was a master of the
medium, fully appreciating its power to
reach into the living rooms of America
from sea to shining sea.
During our time in Omaha, John F.
Kennedy was not a local favorite. The
city's deeply conservative culture
remained immune to Kennedy's charms and to
his arguments for social changes, such as
civil rights and the introduction of
government-subsidized medical care for the
elderly. I'm sure many of my conservative
friends at the time thought I was a card
short of being a member of the Communist
Party because I regularly championed the
need for enforced racial equality and
Medicare.
One of the most popular speakers to
come through Omaha in those days was a
familiar figure from my childhood, when
kids in small towns on the Great Plains
spent Saturday afternoons in movie
theaters watching westerns. Ronald Reagan
looked just like he did on the big screen.
He was kind of a local boy who had made
good, starting out as a radio star next
door in Iowa and moving on to Hollywood,
before becoming a television fixture as
host of General Electric Theater.
Reagan's Omaha appearances were part of
his arrangement with GE, which allowed him
to be an old-fashioned circuit-riding
preacher, warning against the evils of big
government and Communism, while praising
the virtues of big business and the free
market. He was every inch a star,
impeccably dressed and groomed. But those
of us who shared his Midwestern roots were
a bit surprised to find that although he
was completely cordial, he was not
noticeably warm. That part of his
personality remained an enigma even to his
closest friends and advisers throughout
his historically successful political
career.
In Omaha the only time he lightened up
in my presence was when I noticed he was
wearing contact lenses and I asked him
about them. He got genuinely excited as he
described how they were a new soft model,
not like the hard ones that could irritate
the eyes. He even wrote down the name of
his California optometrist so Meredith
could order a pair for herself. (Later,
when he became president, I often thought,
"He's not only a great politician, he's a
helluva contact lens salesman.")
President Kennedy also passed through
Omaha, but only for a brief stop at the
Strategic Air Command headquarters there.
In those days, SAC was an instantly
recognized acronym because the bombers it
comprised -- some of which we could see
because they were always in the air ready
to respond in case of an attack -- were a
central component of America's Cold War
military strategy.
More memorable for me was a visit to
SAC by the president's brother Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy. The younger
Kennedy was a striking contrast to the
president, who had been smiling and chatty
with the local press and even more
impressive in person than on television.
Unlike the president, who was always
meticulously and elegantly dressed, the
attorney general was wearing a rumpled
suit, and the collar on his blue
button-down shirt was frayed. He was
plainly impatient, and his mood did not
improve when I asked for a reaction to
Alabama governor George Wallace's demand
that JFK resign the presidency because of
his stance on school desegregation. Bobby
fixed those icy blue eyes on me and said,
as if I were to blame for the governor's
statement, "I have no comment on anything
Governor Wallace has to say."
I was on duty in the newsroom a few
weeks later when the United Press
International wire-service machine began
to sound its bulletin bells. I walked over
casually and began to read a series of
sentences breaking in staccato fashion
down the page:
- Three shots were fired at president
Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas
. . . Flash -- Kennedy seriously
wounded, perhaps fatally by assassin's
bullet . . . President John F. Kennedy
died at approximately 1:00 pm
(CST).
John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought
would define the political ideal for the
rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the
senseless violence of a single moment. In
ways we could not have known then, the
gunshots in Dealey Plaza triggered a
series of historic changes: the quagmire
of Vietnam that led to the fall of Lyndon
Johnson as president; the death of Robert
Kennedy in pursuit of the presidency; and
the comeback, presidency, and subsequent
disgrace of Richard Nixon.
On that beautiful late autumn November
morning, however, my immediate concern was
to get this story on the air. I rushed the
news onto our noon broadcast, and as I was
running back to the newsroom, one of the
station's Kennedy haters said, "What's
up?"
I responded, "Kennedy's been shot."
He said, "It's about time someone got
the son of a bitch."
Given the gauzy shades of popular
memory, the invocations of Camelot and JFK
as our nation's prince, it may be
surprising to younger Americans to know
that President Kennedy was not universally
beloved.
Now Kennedy was gone, and this man was
glad. I lunged toward him, but another
co-worker pulled me away.
Copyright
© 2007 Tom Brokaw. All Right
Reserved. Published with
permission.
Tom
Brokaw is the author of four bestsellers:
The Greatest Generation, The Greatest
Generation Speaks, An Album of
Memories, and A Long Way from
Home. From 1976 to 1981 he anchored
Today on NBC. He was the sole anchor and
managing editor of NBC Nightly News with
Tom Brokaw from 1983 to 2004. Visit the
website at www.boom-brokaw.com.
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