My Personal, Private Kennedy Assassination

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When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 50 years ago , the world reacted with horror, shock, sadness, and grief. I also reacted with horror, shock, sadness, and grief, but there was something more than that going on in my mind. I took Kennedy’s assassination personally. I don’t anymore, but God knows I did then.

Carl Hoffman in 1961, five months after Kennedy's inauguration
Carl Hoffman in 1961, five months after the inauguration of President Kennedy

On November 22, 1963 I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade at the Sarah Greenwood Elementary School in the Dorchester section of Boston. I was in the Boston Public School System’s pilot “rapid advanced class,” because in those days I was thought to be “gifted.” To this day I have no idea why.

As I mentioned, this was a pilot class, still experimental, so the school system spared no expense in providing us with the latest new textbooks; new learning materials; new teaching equipment; new desks and chairs that weren’t bolted to the floor but which could actually be moved around the classroom; all kinds of fancy new educational whistles, bells, buzzers, and gongs; and most importantly, a new teacher, specially selected and trained to deal with—I wince once more as I write this—“gifted” children.

Now while all of this was going on, we had a bright, young, handsome man in the White House, John F. Kennedy, our own dashing youthful senator from Massachusetts. The only president I had been aware of before this was Dwight Eisenhower—instrumental in winning World War II before I was born—but later a gray, bald, grandfatherly presence throughout my childhood, smiling blandly down at me from black-and-white portraits hung in every nursery school, kindergarten, and elementary school classroom in which I’d been imprisoned up to 1961. After eight years of Ike, Kennedy was a major change.

And after almost as many years being taught by elderly, unmarried, embittered, gray or blue-haired ladies with dowdy dresses, baggy stockings, ill-fitting dentures, and bifocal eyeglasses suspended from tarnished metal neck chains, my new teacher was a major change too. Mr. Joseph DeSario was young and male, two characteristics I had never seen or even imagined in a teacher before.

But there was more to it than that. An 11 year-old mind has a lot to process. Everything is new; experience and information come flooding into the brain like a tsunami, often faster than a kid can clearly sort out. Well, sometimes wires get crossed, signals get mixed, and things get confused. Stated simply, my young new teacher, in front of me every day, and my young new president, on television every day, began for me to blend into one person.

Both were young and handsome. Both were charismatic. Both were liberal Democrats, with what seemed to be identical outlooks and opinions. Both were married, had pretty young wives and cute little toddler children. Both had been in the military. Both were Catholic. And last but certainly not least, both were from Boston—hometown boys whose immigrant ancestors had struggled on the same mean streets, albeit in different neighborhoods, that mine had at more or less the same time.

So, whenever one appeared, I saw the other. Whenever one spoke, I heard the other. As far as my gut was concerned, President Kennedy was Mr. DeSario, and Mr. DeSario was President Kennedy.

You can imagine the state of my 11 year-old mind on that chilly November day. Suddenly, without warning, part of my Kennedy/DeSario tandem was gone. And as if that weren’t enough, the actual Mr. DeSario happened to come down with the flu and was sick the next few days. His unheralded absence from the classroom left us in the hands of, yes, another blue-haired, embittered old lady with eyeglasses hanging from a metal neck chain. Mr. DeSario came back though, and we—along with the rest of the country—mourned our dead president and got on with our lives.

I “graduated” from the sixth grade and the advanced class in June 1964 and never saw Mr. DeSario again. I heard that he rose in the Boston Public School System, becoming principal of a high school, and then some sort of administrator. Early last summer, moved by a memory, I “Googled” his name to find out where he was and what he was doing. I discovered that Mr. Joseph DeSario had died less than two weeks before, a little short of his 80th birthday.

Let others continue to delve into the Kennedy assassination, probe the lingering mysteries, analyze the how’s and why’s, and pontificate about the effects of the assassination on American culture, politics, and the national psyche. As far as I’m concerned, however, the case is now closed.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Mr. Hoffman,

    I wanted to let you know that when Mr DeSario left the Boston School department he went on to touch the lives of many ~ I was lucky enough to be his secretary when he was principal at the Morrison School in Braintree. You described him beautifully ~ he was a gentleman that was charismatic. Mr. Desario will always be remembered by his staff and students for his kindness, fairness, gentleness and his high level of respect for EVERYONE (he did anti-bullying programs years before they were required).

    I consider myself blessed to have worked next to him. Thank you to the DeSario family for forwarding me this article!

  2. Mr. Hoffman-my name is Diane, and I am Joe DeSario’s daughter. We discovered your article and wanted to reach out to you to let you know how it touched our family. Your comparison of my Dad to John Fitzgerald Kennedy is so complimentary and ironic as well. My Mom and Dad held President Kennedy in high esteem, and your parallelism is touching.

    My Dad was born to be an educator, loved to teach, and was so proud of the gifted students at the Sara Greenwood Elementary School and often spoke of the program. He touched many lives and your article is a testament to that.

    Please accept my family’s sincerest appreciation for sharing your story and allowing us to walk down memory lane in tribute to my beloved Dad……

  3. Carl,
    Mirroring Pres Kennedy on your brilliant teacher may be the greatest flattery to the latter, or perhaps vice-versa, considering the successful job done to a once a gifted child. One does not need to be a leader in position to give exemplary leadership practices – such was very evident with your dear Mr. DeSario. On the closure of the death of your historical president, the average Joe will continue to struggle with that Mr. Hoffman. I would have been glad though to put my president in that limousine during the assassination.

    Rad

  4. I was in study hall in high school when the Kennedy assassination was announced. In Ireland, of course, we thought of him as “our” President of the United States. I remember thinking it was a prelude to war.
    As for you, Chuck, all of us who have had the pleasure of knowing you know you are gifted

  5. I was a year ahead of you, Carl, in junior high in Irving, Texas, right outside of Dallas (and the home of Lee Harvey Oswald for some time prior to the tragic events of that day). There was a short string of cryptic inter-com announcements at school and then we were released early that day. I remember the walk home. It was sunny, unseasonably warm, and all the way home (it was almost two miles to my house) there were doors and windows open with tv and radio broadcasting live from Dallas as events unfolded. Though I did not possess the word in my vocabulary at that time, it was a surreal experience. I remember little else of those days beyond my walk home and the feeling of floating unreality punctuated and drawn on by the bodiless intercom announcements and media snippets that hung in the dry warm air.

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