"Eye Witness to History" -- "It just happens"

I stayed home from school that day, convincing my mother that I was sick. My only memory of the day is walking across the street with my mother to Mrs. Dugas' house; and when we walked in her front door (nobody knocked; you just walked in), she told my mother, "Sha, they shot him."

Baby Boomers have been faulted by those younger, those who collectively and exasperatedly have said, "We don't care where you were when Kennedy was shot." I was 8 years old and happy to be out of school, so when I'm asked, I don't have an expanded story of tragedy and shock that many of my peers can share from November 22, 1963.

Earlier this week, my wife, younger daughter and I drove to the University of North Texas to see the video "Eye Witness to History," produced by the Dallas Morning News and journalist Hugh Aynesworth, and to hear Aynesworth's follow-up commentary.

During the Q&A session, I told Aynesworth and the Dallas Morning News moderator that it was a wrestling match to get my 16-year-old daughter to attend the program, and then asked, "Why should she care?"

The moderator patiently explained to my daughter that Kennedy shaped the lives of Baby Boomers: his call to action ... "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" ... and the unprecedented ugliness that Pandora'ed out of his death. 

Baby Boomers can be obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. We're all somewhere between awestruck admirers and cloak-and-dagger conspiracy theorists, grieving for the man who opened the door to civil rights and made us a proud nation of moon-walkers, but still asking, "Who shot Kennedy?"

To today's teenager, Kennedy may just be a page in a textbook. But as my professor, Samra Bufkins, explained to my daughter, we never thought something like that could happen. Then Ms. Bufkins and I began walking my daughter through the events of our childhood, just a few that shocked us into a "new reality:" Charles Whitman, the UT sniper in 1966; and the 1968 murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

And then we turned to my daughter, nodded to her phone as if it was a 21st-century Walter Cronkite announcing Kennedy's death and together asked, "Does it bother you to hear about ...?" And I'm not even sure what we asked, but she knew we were talking about the 24/7, readily accessible news -- broadcast media and social media -- about school shootings and violence among kids and almost daily killings of civilians in always shifting war zones.

And she said, "It happens." Her eyes get moist, and she repeats, "It just happens."

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Hugh Aynesworth's career was dramatically altered, when he took the day off from his beat as a science and aerospace reporter to see President Kennedy's cavalcade pass through downtown Dallas; and he has spent the last 50 years becoming one of the most recognized researchers into the Kennedy assassination.

He is considered one of the more informed experts on the Kennedy assassination. He not only witnessed the shooting of the President in Dealy Plaza, but he was on-site when Dallas police arrested suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and then when nightclub owner Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald in the basement garage of the Dallas police department.

The video is fascinating, and I'd encourage you to spend 60 minutes watching it. Aynesworth interviewed many of the key characters from the Kennedy assassination story, including officers who arrested Oswald, the Irving homeowner who befriended Oswald and his wife, Oswald's co-worker who drove him to work at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, the physician who worshipped Kennedy but had to watch him die at Parkland Hospital, and the Secret Service agent who scrambled to protect Mrs. Kennedy as she struggled to retrieve her husband's blown-away skull pieces from the trunk of the Presidential limousine.

 

"He became a millionaire:" Make it go away!

My daughter and I went out for Chinese food tonight, and a few seconds after this photo was taken, in the no-time-for-segues, relentless conversational pace of teenage girls, she blurted, "Oh, my gosh. My history teacher. Today. He starts singing that song. The Beverly Hillbillies. And he asked, 'What happened to Jed?' And I said, 'He became a millionaire.' And he asked, 'How did you know that?' And I said my dad walks around the house singing it ALL the time."

Whew!
 
About an hour later, Luci (my dog, the quieter of the females in my house) and I walked the mile up to our church's community garden. This past weekend, my wife and I planted a couple of tomato plants and seeds for peas, beans, carrots, spinach and other foods that we don't like but that grow in the fall, and I was planning on watering.

But I took another look at the sky just to be sure it's not going to rain, and this is what I saw ... beautiful!



 

And with the same uncontrollable mind rush that delivered "first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire" to my daughter, Tennessee Ernie Ford's choir launches into:

 

He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am his own

 

Ironically, that song is In the Garden, and I remember my dad playing Tennessee Ernie Ford's album and singing along (it's a great phrase for meditation, especially if you just happen to be in a garden watering vegetables). 



 

So, what causes those "mind rushes?" What makes those memories stick.

 

Why can you say "three-hour tour" to someone my age -- many of us who can't even remember to pull our zippers up -- and we immediately break into the theme song from Gilligan's Island? Walk up to a baby boomer and say, "farm livin' is the life for me," and we're holding a pitchfork or driving an imaginary tractor, singing "Green Acres."

 

What makes words, phrases and ideas memorable? We were a TV generation, and those simple, story-telling theme songs burned forever in our brains. But how can contemporary writers deliver messages that have the same impact?

 

My daughter's Beverly Hillbillies horror reminded me of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Heath and Heath, 2007) that I reported on a few years ago.

 

It convincingly outlines the SUCCESs concept to making writing memorable. SUCCESs is the authors' acronym for the key elements to creating messages that "stick" with readers or listeners:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Authors Chip and Dan Heath immediately make their point in chapter one, "The Kidney Heist," telling the urban legend about a traveling salesman who meets a woman in a bar, invites her to his room, and then the next thing he remembers is waking up in a bathtub full of ice with stitches on the spot covering where his kidney should be.

 

Re-read or simply re-tell that story. Like so many urban legends and other stories, theme songs, commercials and movie scenes that have created our unique cultures, it has all the SUCCESs elements to make it memorable. Made to Stick is a must-read for any writer, but especially those writer charged with delivering convincing, persuasive messages to move publics to action.

 

Or for those writers who want to plague TV-watching fans long into middle age (and their children ... bwahahahahahaha) with ditties that never die, like my own personel nemeses Underdog, Batman and, of course, The Addams Family (snap, snap).

 

My dad loved to play his guitar and sing, and he especially liked country gospel and bluegrass music. I know I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my favorites, so just think of it as a bonus. Here's my dad:

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

 

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House, 2007.