There was nothing in today’s Washington Post about the Kennedy assassination. I had expected that there’d be something. There usually is some kind of look back on each anniversary of that traumatic event. And the 45th anniversary is a round enough number that I assumed I’d find at least a mention of it.

The absence of any remembrance as far as I see in either the Post or the New York Times seems to me as if it could mean only one of two things. Either so much time has passed that that it’s now considered ancient history, or else even the smallest mention of assassination in the current political climate has been rendered taboo by fear.

I suspect the latter. Even Michael Getler, the PBS Ombudsman, recently questioned the wisdom of airing a special titled “Oswald’s Ghost.” He wrote that “The 45th anniversary of anything is not marked very often and since the film made its debut in January, the anniversary link doesn’t hold up well. Beyond that, there is, in the re-broadcasting, the question of judgment, common sense, and, as the writer from Minnesota suggests, the fear that ‘has been in the back of our minds all through the campaign.’ Maybe those three or four viewers who wrote or called are being overly sensitive, but I agree with them; not a good time to re-broadcast this film.”

Perhaps I’m henceforth only supposed to look forward, and not back, out of fear that talking about the past will create an unwelcome future. But I can’t do that. I can’t let it go. Because I remember what it was like to have been 8 1/2 years old, and to have my President, a president I liked, be murdered.

I was so moved (perhaps I should even use the word traumatized) by the assassination back in November of 1963 that I made a scrapbook of sorts, cutting articles out of newspapers and magazines and taping them together with the clumsiness of the child I was. You can see how poorly I treated these artifacts by the tape marks on the Herblock cartoon above, the Daily News editorial at left, and the Earl Wilson gossip column below. [Click on any image to render it more readable.] The current state of these clips will make archivists shudder, but it was the best I could manage at the time.

I share these items with you today—some of which I hope will be less familiar than the usual newspaper headlines pulled out on this occasion—to make sure that someone pauses to remember the death of a president, even though I’m getting the sense that for the next four or eight November 22nds, I’m supposed to be keeping my mourning to myself.

I don’t care. I’ve been thinking about November 22, 1963 today, and I want you to do the same, even if it’s just for as long as it takes you to glance at this entry and move on to the next.