The "It's as if it happened yesterday!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking forward to 2013 and what it will hold for Carol and me and our family.  Every year at Christmas we get a Christmas card from friends and in the card is a letter telling about their family and what they have been doing during the year.  Lists the highlights of the past year and what they are hoping for in the new year.  Well, I'm not into that sort of thing so you're in luck.  Anyway, these stories kind of document the year as it progresses.  Today I am going to write about the past and the events that shaped my life 50 years ago.  Yep, 1963.  The year after I started college and gained more responsibility within the family.  That means I had to pay for my education!  My parents allowed me to stay at home during college, helping tremendously.  They provided all the meals and a caring place to stay.  They appreciated that I went to a local college and didn't ask for help to pay for my education.  Truth is, they couldn't pay.  Anyway, during the year 1963 some important things happened in my life as well as your life.  See if you remember some of the events as I share them with you.  On January 28 Harvey Gantt started college at Clemson University.  Name mean anything to you.  Harvey was the first African American admitted to the South Carolina school where he eventually graduated with honors.  Twenty years later he was elected the first African American mayor of Charlotte, N.C.  Then in March the Beatles released their debut album in the United Kingdom,  Please Please Me.  Had songs such as "I Saw Her Standing There", "Love Me Do", and "Twist and Shout".  A year later it was released in the states, but was renamed Introducing ... the Beatles.  It was eventually ranked #39 on the list of 500 greatest albums.  On April 16 Martin Luther King, from his jail cell in Birmingham, wrote a letter to a group of white clergymen.  In is was the famous line, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  Oh yeah, on May 8th, Sean Connery, as 007, acted in the very first James Bond movie,  Dr. No.  Twenty-three more Bond movies, with 5 different 007s have been released since then.  Can you name half of them?  Can you name a third of them?  On June 10 The Equal Pay Act, which mandated that woman receive the same pay as men for the same job done, was signed into law.  Remember who signed it?  46 years later, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became law, further protecting woman from pay discrimination.  Seems the first act didn't work.  I'm not sure the second one has fully worked either.  Only fair, right!  June was a big month in 1963.  On June 10 President Kennedy mobilized the National Guard troops in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Governor George Wallace stepped aside, allowing Vivian Malone and James Hood to enter the doorway at the University of Alabama as the first African American students to attend the school.  Following the confrontation, President Kennedy delivered his landmark civil rights address.  Eleven months later the Civil rights Act of 1964 became law.  One of the greatest speeches of my lifetime, "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered in Washington, DC before a crowd of a quarter of million people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  This speech pressured Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill granting equal opportunity and an end to segregation and discrimination.  But, after 50 years, has it truly worked?  September 15 was the date that the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, an African American church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed four young girls, all under the age of 15.  The first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor was Sidney Poitier for his lead roll in the movie Lillies of the Field which opened on October 1.  And, one of the saddest moments of my lifetime happened on November 22 of 1963.  Do you remember where you were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through Dallas.  I was working at the Acme Supermarket, just having started my shift, when the news came over the loud-speaker that the President had been shot.  People were crying, some sitting in the aisles not knowing what to do.  Unbelievable day for everyone. Aboard Air Force One in Dallas, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the new US President.  Two days later, Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, was murdered by Jack Ruby.  I can still remember watching on TV when Oswald was  being transported from police headquarters to the  county jail when Jack Rubenstein ran out from the crowd in the underground tunnel and shot Oswald.  I don't even need the video which follows to help me see Ruby run from the right and stick the gun into Oswald and pull the trigger.  It's been almost 50 years now, but for me it's as if it happened yesterday.  Some still believe that Oswald had help.  If that's so, it will probably go to the grave with the person or persons responsible.  What a year 1963 had been.  I remember it well.  How about you?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.