Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis

I turned 16 that day in 1962. I remember standing mesmerized on the stairs up to my bedroom, watching JFK speak on the big black-and-white Dumont in the living room, talking seriously, calmly, resolutely about war. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W50RNAbmy3M When it was over, I looked at my father and he looked back up at me. We didn't say anything. My mother was murmuring quietly, and I knew that she was saying the Rosary. I don't remember what came on the TV right after -- probably Walter Cronkite, commenting and explaining. When I eventually continued my climb up the stairs, it was not to do homework as I had planned. I lay on my bed in the dark and watched through the south-facing double windows the glow of New York City in the southern sky, imagining the white-hot flash that would come, waiting for the flash.

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