Boom!: Voices of the Sixties

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Boom!: Voices of the Sixties

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Posted: Nov 12, 2007 |Comments: 0 |

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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’tfeel I could tell Meredith’s doctor father I was making less. Meredith, who hada superior college record, couldn’t find any work because, as one personneldirector after another told her, “You’re a young bride. If we hire you, you’lljust get pregnant before long and want maternity leave.”

In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early Sixties seemsboth a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in theMidwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which wasnot yet an American war. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was confronting racism inthe South and getting a good deal of exposure on The Huntley-Brinkley Report onNBC and The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, the two primary networknewscasts, each just fifteen minutes long.

In the fall of 1963, first CBS and then, shortly after, NBC expanded thosesignature news broadcasts to a half hour. As a sign of the importance of theexpansion, Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley were granted lengthy exclusiveinterviews with President Kennedy. ABC wouldn’t be a player in the news majorleagues until the 1970s, when Roone Arledge brought to ABC News the energy andprogramming approach he had applied to ABC Sports. Kennedy, America’s firsttruly telegenic president, was a master of the medium, fully appreciating itspower 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. Thecity’s deeply conservative culture remained immune to Kennedy’s charms and tohis arguments for social changes, such as civil rights and the introduction ofgovernment-subsidized medical care for the elderly. I’m sure many of myconservative friends at the time thought I was a card short of being a memberof the Communist Party because I regularly championed the need for enforcedracial equality and Medicare.

One of the most popular speakers to come through Omaha in those days was afamiliar figure from my childhood, when kids in small towns on the Great Plainsspent Saturday afternoons in movie theaters watching westerns. Ronald Reaganlooked just like he did on the big screen. He was kind of a local boy who hadmade good, starting out as a radio star next door in Iowa and moving on toHollywood, before becoming a television fixture as host of General ElectricTheater.

Reagan’s Omaha appearances were part of his arrangement with GE, whichallowed him to be an old-fashioned circuit-riding preacher, warning against theevils of big government and Communism, while praising the virtues of bigbusiness and the free market. He was every inch a star, impeccably dressed andgroomed. But those of us who shared his Midwestern roots were a bit surprisedto 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 andadvisers throughout his historically successful political career.

In Omaha the only time he lightened up in my presence was when I noticed hewas wearing contact lenses and I asked him about them. He got genuinely excitedas he described how they were a new soft model, not like the hard ones thatcould irritate the eyes. He even wrote down the name of his Californiaoptometrist so Meredith could order a pair for herself. (Later, when he becamepresident, I often thought, “He’s not only a great politician, he’s a helluvacontact lens salesman.”)

President Kennedy also passed through Omaha, but only for a brief stop atthe Strategic Air Command headquarters there. In those days, SAC was aninstantly recognized acronym because the bombers it comprised — some of whichwe could see because they were always in the air ready to respond in case of anattack — 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 AttorneyGeneral Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy was a striking contrast to thepresident, who had been smiling and chatty with the local press and even moreimpressive in person than on television. Unlike the president, who was alwaysmeticulously and elegantly dressed, the attorney general was wearing a rumpledsuit, and the collar on his blue button-down shirt was frayed. He was plainlyimpatient, and his mood did not improve when I asked for a reaction to Alabamagovernor George Wallace’s demand that JFK resign the presidency because of hisstance 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 onanything Governor Wallace has to say.”

I was on duty in the newsroom a few weeks later when the United PressInternational wire-service machine began to sound its bulletin bells. I walkedover casually and began to read a series of sentences breaking in staccatofashion 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 forthe rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a singlemoment. In ways we could not have known then, the gunshots in Dealey Plazatriggered a series of historic changes: the quagmire of Vietnam that led to thefall of Lyndon Johnson as president; the death of Robert Kennedy in pursuit ofthe presidency; and the comeback, presidency, and subsequent disgrace ofRichard Nixon.

On that beautiful late autumn November morning, however, my immediateconcern was to get this story on the air. I rushed the news onto our noonbroadcast, and as I was running back to the newsroom, one of the station’sKennedy 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 JFKas our nation’s prince, it may be surprising to younger Americans to know thatPresident Kennedy was not universally beloved.

Now Kennedy was gone, and this man was glad. I lunged toward him, butanother co-worker pulled me away.

About the Author

Tom Brokaw is the author of four bestsellers: The Greatest Generation, TheGreatest 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 managingeditor of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw from 1983 to 2004.

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