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Me and JFK - 50 years ago today, I was adopted

From my blog: http://acustatic.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-22-1963.html

On November 22, 1963 - 50 years ago today - my mother and father, Betty Joan and Jack DeWitt finally realized their biggest dream: having a child.  It was an adoption, as they had found out several years earlier that they could not get pregnant.  They picked me up from the adoption agency and drove home with me.  When they arrived home they heard the big news of the day.

John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. 

People around the country reacted with shock and horror at the murder of their President.  My birth mother (who I found in 2009) said that it was one of the first events she remembered from the year 1963.  She had ended her alcoholism when she found out she was pregnant with me by entering A.A. and gave birth to me on October 27.  She asked not to see me so she could stay strong, and I was in foster care for the next four weeks. Kennedy's assassination was the first clear image she has from her life at that point.  She said she remembers walking through downtown Denver and seeing grown men walking down the street, sobbing out loud in public.  She remembers the underlying sense of fear that everyone shared, wondering how the nation would survive.  "Would we be all right?", she recalled to me recently.

When I think about what my parents emotions must have been that day, it is almost incomprehensible.  The joy of finally having a child of their own juxtaposed against the horror of the day's event playing out before their eyes on television - the first televised assassination.  What could they have been feeling?  No one would have faulted them if they chose to turn off the TV and cocoon themselves, ignoring the mayhem.

My adoptive mother was not an easy person to grow up with, but when the chips were down, she always made the right parenting decision, every time.  I think this was the first chance she had to do that, and she did it right.  Years later, she would tell me that she felt a sense that it would somehow be my legacy to fill JFK's shoes.  Not literally, of course; not to be President.  But certainly figuratively, to be a good man (at least she thought JFK was) and to fulfill whatever promise I had for my life.

When I was a kid, that was hard to listen to at times.  The last thing you want to hear when you are 12 years old and just want to go out and ride a skateboard with your buddy is some hoohaw about how you have a legacy to fulfill.  But I do think that single decision on her part, to accept the assassination and make it into a positive for my life, affected all of the other decisions she made as I grew up which were right.  Stan wants to play music?  Support him. Stan gets busted shoplifting with some friends? Ground him quietly and make it into a teaching moment.  Stan hangs out with the wrong friends?  (See above.)  Find new outlets for him to make new ones.  Stan drank some of my wine and thinks he won't get caught?  Just quietly let him know he got caught.  Somehow the idea that I had a 'legacy' to fulfill animated her parenting.

Oh, to be sure, she made some bad choices.  Throwing the frying pan at me one time was not a great one. The occasional blind rages fueled by menopause?  Not good.  Trying to scare me out of having sex with a girl by saying she'd "kill me" if I ever got a girl pregnant?  Yeah, that one messed with me for a long time.  She was a human with deep anxieties and fears of her own. But those were all excusable mistakes that didn't really matter.  When it mattered, when the time came to really do the right thing, she did, every time.

As I said, today is the 50th anniversary of that day.  I celebrated my 50th birthday a few weeks ago, and my thoughts on that day were with my birth mother.  But on this day, they are with my adoptive mother and father, who brought me home on one of the worst days in American history.

In some sense, John F. Kennedy has kind of always hung around the edges of my life.  We share that one day of horror/joy, of course.  When I was in high school, the conspiracy stories were continuing, and my American History teacher devoted a whole unit to JFK's assassination.  There have been countless movies, docudramas, books, magazine articles and TV shows devoted to him and Nov. 22.  And they all make me think of my mother.

How many people can say that?  "I say 'JFK assassinated', what's the first thing you think of?"

"Mom."

Well, Mom and Dad.  I am thinking of you this day.  For all intents and purposes to you, this was my birthday.  Happy birthday to me.  And thank you.

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