Just the other day, I p
layed the progressive rock group The Nice’s version of “Rondo a la Turk,” a variation from the Piano Sonata No. 15 by Mozart and the same title by Dave Brubeck.
It came to me once again that just hearing it brought back memories of what I was doing when I listened to it so often. It took me back to January 1969 at Kent House, Apartment No. 11, on the campus of Grand Valley State College. Unlike so many other instances, the memories are sublime.
Then it struck me that like old musical selections, famous events so often prompt memories of just what we were doing and what our lives were like “back in that day.” And it’s common to read Facebook posters ask “Where were you and what were you doing when you heard the news?” Yes, it was a snapshot in our own personal cameras of history.
My first recollection os such a phenomenon was the launching of the Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957. I was only a fourth-grader in Battle Creek, but I remember Mrs. Wilkins describing what occurred as a momentous event, the first time human beings were able to hurl something out into space and cause it to orbit the Earth.
The next event was Mrs. Viola Carroll expressing great consternation in French class to us because she had just learned that President Kennedy had been shot in the head in Dallas. Bob Moras immediately responded with, “Hey, maybe we’ll get out school!” I was even more flippant after the bell rang and went to our lockers to get our world history texts. I said to Terry Parks two lockers down, “Lucky Lindy gets his chance,” a reference to Lyndon Johnson. Parks just gave me a grim “It’s not over yet” reply. I was too clueless to understand that what I said was not funny.
When the radio reported Kennedy was dead in Ernie Strong’s history class, my amusement turned to sorrow almost immediately.
The moon landing was different than the others because it was an anticipated occurrence. I was sitting in the TV room with my stepdad and siblings and watching with wonder when Neil Armstrong spoke his well-rehearsed line, “That’s one small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind.”
The next one I recall was the sudden shocking killing of ex-Beatle John Lennon, an incident that says something about how the news was disseminated 36 years ago. I had returned to my Prairie Lake estate after covering a meeting and quaffing an Olympia beer while winding down at the end of the day and watching Monday Night football. Near the end of the game, Howard Cosell verbalized the bulletin that John Lennon had been shot outside the Dakota Hotel in New York City and though authorities rushed him to the hospital… “dead on arrival!”
I frantically searched for verification of such a report, but it was just past 11:30 and the only TV programs showing back then were syndicated reruns. I didn’t know for certain until I listened to the radio the next morning on my way to work.
I was lying on a couch in Ann Arbor, sick with the flu, when my wife called from Ypsilanti High School to tell me the Challenger, which included teacher Christa McAuliffe, had blown up. So I turned on the TV news.
Years later, I was showing my old fishing buddy Jim Wasserman how to surf the Internet when I spotted the news that Princess Diana was killed in a car wreck.
And, of course, the granddaddy of them all, Sept. 11, 2001, I was editing copy in the newsroom at J-Ad Graphics when reporter Ruth Zachary called me and said a plane had just hit one of the Word Trade Center twin towers. My first reaction was just like the one George W. Bush reported, that this was a ridiculously lousy airplane pilot. Then I heard another plane had hit seconds later. Like everyone else, I was horrified.
There have been other incidents in which I recall what I was doing and what like was like while a snapshot of history was being taken.
