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Seven Silent Football Games (5:04)
The concussive violence of football, the long term damage to players, was never in the national consciousness in those days. Back when I was a kid, such thoughts never intruded. We had no idea.
There is something about football crowds. I’m not sure exactly what it is. But if most of us were blindfolded and put into the middle of a crowd at a professional game, we’d be able to tell if it was football or some other sport. The raucousness of the crowd, maybe? The yelling of the vendors? The play-by-play enthusiasm? Hard to say what the rhythm is, exactly, but it is unmistakable.
The Redskins vs Eagles game at Franklin Field in Philadelphia had been billed as a big deal. The stadium itself seemed like the setting for it. It was the oldest stadium in the country. The Eagles had been there only a few years.
By the time the coin was tossed that Sunday, there were over 60,000 fans in the stadium. But, on that Sunday, you would not have recognized the sound as happening during a football event. In fact, there was an eerie silence during the entire game.
A 25 yard pass from Jurgensen to Brown provided some hope for the home team. Yet, even during the breakaway run for the goal, the entire stadium was still. No cheering. No reaction. The vendors selling hotdogs and drinks worked without any of the normal shouting. Money and food were wordlessly exchanged.
The Redskins won the game. The home team lost. Nobody seemed to notice. It was as if 60,000 people had simultaneously lost their voices.
The same strange silence was reported from every stadium in which a professional game was played. There were 7 games in all that Sunday. Each one played out before a silent, sullen crowd. Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, everywhere the same. The Cardinals narrowly beat the Giants in New York. Nobody reacted. The New York crowd seemed more interested in the National Anthem than in the game.
It is hard to give a sense of those days to anyone who did not experience the times in which we lived. That Sunday, two days after the assassination, provides only small anecdotal illustration. It was a choking sort of grief.
In those days of the Cold War, the terror of nuclear conflict combined with fear and loathing toward the Soviet empire. The domino theory of international Communist conquest was considered an established fact, with debate reserved for the dangerously naive. As President Kennedy called for personal vigor, office personnel, secretaries, clerks, and managers, actually worked overtime just to feel they were contributing to the national effort.
Civil Rights was a noble struggle against evil itself, and segregationists were a national embarrassment.
It has been described as a time of innocence, with innocence lost on that bloody Friday in 1963. But it was more than that. It was less an innocence than a sense of national purpose that seems almost childlike from today’s jaded weariness. There is a sadness in many of us at the loss of that purpose, now seen through cynical eyes as something other than what we experienced then.
The carping was as severe as it is now. Pamphlets were distributed in Dallas that day with a photograph of the visiting President and the words: “Wanted For Treason!” The antecedents of Tea Party-ism existed in Birchers. Racism was evident in KKK sympathizers. Violence was met by peaceful demonstration.
A very large proportion of Americans thought that reasonable balance required a stand somewhere “between the two extremes.” Yes, voting rights and safety of black citizens in the south were considered one of the extremes.
John F. Kennedy was on a national wave. But he did more than ride that wave. He seemed to those who wanted to join the effort, as having channeled and directed it into a mighty force for progress. The country was deeply flawed, but America was working, growing, toward national redemption, leading the world on a similar path.
I was very young back then. I remember adults joining children in public sorrow, men and women crying unashamed. I remember a sort of communion of grief. It was as if we were, briefly, an extended family.
I had nightmares through my teenaged years. My imagination tells me I was not alone.
Today, the President we knew back then was not simply a reflection of an innocent country in innocent times. Partly because of his youth, his leadership, the way he spoke the words he gave to us, he, and we, were something more.
Not so much an innocent country in innocent times.
We were an inspired nation in inspired times.
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