Which Era? 
I enjoy most of Hugh Hewitt's writings but must respectfully disagree with his 2004 article in The Weekly Standard. Hugh posits that The Sixties began with the election of John F. Kennedy. "The Sixties ended on September 11, 2001, but they were interred on the morning of November 3, 2004, when a senator from Massachusetts played the reverse role of another senator from Massachusetts 44 years earlier."
Hugh writes that when John Kennedy won, "it set in motion events that would pummel America and its politics right through this just-completed campaign. The triumph of Jack Kennedy elevated style, new money, and a new elitism into the mainstream. It launched a war that would divide the country as none before - excepting the Civil War - had. It led to the credentialing of a media elite just now beginning a long overdue mass retirement. And it set in motion a swirl of cultural change that would culminate in the bipolarization of the political world into red and blue."
It is my opinion that JFK was part of The Fifties - a magical era that spanned a period of sixteen years, from October 14, 1947 to November 22, 1963.
The Fifties: On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in an experimental rocket plane. From that point forward, all of us yearned to go faster. In post-War America, people had money, energy and a sense of optimism. World War II and the Great Depression were behind us.
We demanded big, powerful overhead-valve high-octane engines in our cars (instead of those puny, low-octane L-head engines which were carryovers from the Thirties, for Pete's sake!). We wanted to drive fast on fat tubeless tires (introduced in 1947 by B. F. Goodrich). We wanted sleek cars with tailfins for high speed stability - the first tailfin was on the '48 Cadillac, introduced in October, 1947. (The inspiration for the Caddy fin came from the P-38 - a fast, twin-fuselage WW II fighter plane.) We wanted to get wherever we were going as quickly as possible. Prior to WW II, less than 2% of all passengers traveled by air. By 1956, air passenger traffic equaled rail passenger traffic. In 1947, Chuck Yeager unknowingly spawned the Fifties with his historic flight - his quest for speed. Ten years later, the Boeing 707 passenger jet made its inaugural flight, cutting flying times dramatically for travelers.
This 16-year period brought improvements in many aspects of everyday life. In 1948, 75% of all homes had flush toilets; this figure rose to over 90% by 1963. In 1948, only 64% of all homes were had telephones; by 1963, 83% had phones. During this extended 16-year decade, the automobile fatality rate dropped by over 40%. The homicide rate dropped by 32%. In 1948, only 33% of all adults had four years of high school education; by 1963, it had risen to 46%. (Today, it's almost 80%.)
All of this was part of the Good Life - larger disposable income and more leisure time caused an increase in recreational activities. By 1958, manufacturing wages had risen substantially, averaging $83.56 per week - compared with $54.32 for 1949. More disposable income meant more money to spend on 'fun' things.
The Fifties saw the mass production of labor-saving home appliances (4,196,000 electric clothes washers are sold in 1948 compared with 1,892,000 in 1941) and convenience foods to provide the fifties woman with more leisure time. By 1957, the average American family was consuming 850 cans of food each year. Sales of Mason jars and other labor-intensive canning and preserving supplies plummeted.
Former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and singer Frankie Avalon made their movie debut in the 1963 movie, 'Beach Party' - the first of the forgettable, simplistic 'beach' movies which captured the freedom of the 1950s so perfectly. Movies like this angered our Cold War enemies - showing ordinary American proles, living a rich, bourgeois life and having fun in a carefree and safe society.
During John F. Kennedy's administration, we were still in The Fifties - sipping cocktails, driving gigantic, multi-colored automobiles and contemplating the Conquest of Space. But all that was soon to end, tragically.
The 1950's officially concluded on November 22, 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Until that time, the dangers Americans feared were vague impersonal threats of nuclear war. We'd all die together - vaporized instantly in a giant, bright explosion - an almost-romantic Fifties concept. (We all knew that hiding under a desk, as we were taught during those emergency drills in school, wasn't going to save us.) Reality was, however, much more bloody and violent - watching the leader of the United States have his head blown off in Dallas. And watching it over and over and over again on the Zapruder film ever since.
An era ended; everything changed afterward. Quickly too. The music changed first - in 1963, American Bandstand ended its daily show, moving to a weekly format. Dinah Washington and Patsy Cline died; the Beatles took over the music scene. Later, psychedelic music ripped our eardrums; disco numbed them.
After 1963, the cars began to change. Ralph Nader wrote 'Unsafe At Any Speed' and pushed for regulations to make automobiles ugly and safe. Later, the Oil Crisis came along and it made fuel-efficient smaller cars more attractive. Acres of chrome trim were abandoned to save weight and, therefore, improve fuel economy. Antipollution regulations made cars run poorly and, eventually, made engines too complex for a backyard mechanic to fix.
There was no Vietnam War in November of 1963 - it was a "police action" with "advisors." Yes, American soldiers were dying in 'Nam but in relatively small numbers - as in all the other "hot spots" Americans were asked to "police." (Vietnam became a "war" under Lyndon Johnson - and the death rate skyrocketed.)
The culture changed after November 1963, too. There was anger in the air - more assassinations, race riots, an unpopular war, an unruly and boisterous youth subculture who trusted no one, especially those over 30. Perhaps, somewhat justifiably, too. They were, after all, witnesses to the death of the dream - thanks to television - another Miracle Product which became a must for every household in the '50s.
Less than a month after JFK's death, the tranquilizer Valium was introduced - just in time to handle the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies.
Robert Frost, who spoke at Kennedy's inauguration and was America's unofficial poet laureate, died in 1963. Frost once said that a verse "should begin in delight and end in wisdom." The Fifties began in delight and excitement. And ended in tragedy. And spawned The Sixties.
Personal Reflections: In 1963, on a sunny Friday afternoon in November, I was leaving a college classroom after taking a thermodynamics exam. In the hallway, the professor pulled several students aside and whispered, "The president's been shot in Texas." He had no further details, so I hurried to the parking lot, hopped in my VW Beetle and turned on the radio. I began driving home and, as I got on the expressway, the JFK's death was announced. Not knowing what to do, I turned on my headlights. As did most of the other cars on the road.
I liked John F. Kennedy. He was young and a fresh break from the old, fuddy-duddy, grandfatherly Presidents like Ike and Truman. In October of 1960, a friend and I fastened a Kennedy-for-President poster to the front of my dad's '56 Ford and we drove up Frankford Avenue (in Northeast Philadelphia) about 500 yards ahead of the convertible (a Buick, I think) in which candidate JFK was riding. (Try breaking into a Presidential candidate's motorcade today. You'll be quickly gunned down by Uzi-wielding Secret Service agents!) My parents were big JFK fans, too. He was a Democrat, Irish, Catholic ... he was us!
Chris Matthews also believes that the assassination of John F. Kennedy marked the beginning of the Sixties. He says they "were sparked by the grief engendered by our loss of JFK." That's not what I believe. The don't-trust-the-government (or, as they say in the South, gum-mint), might-as-well-do-something-different-cuz-everything’s-all-screwed-up-anyway Sixties was initiated by the attempts by the government (with the press in the cheering section) to wrap up the JFK's murder in a tidy little package as quickly as a Perry Mason episode. The gum-mint "solved" the murder before JFK was even in the ground (and made sure that the lone official suspect was conveniently and quickly disposed of) but no one really believed that a chinless little wimp with a cheap rifle could pull off such a thing.
People began to lose trust in the gum-mint. And grew long hair and protested about everything.
Every November 22nd, the networks feature JFK assassination tidbits, interviewing aging people with failing memories. Honestly, I'm tired of hearing about the assassination; everything is a rehash of stale old facts and rumors. Nobody has anything new to say - like who really killed John Kennedy.
Dallas put an end to JFK the Man. His promise was unfulfilled, his administration unfinished. But JFK the Legend, was born on that November afternoon. Some television segments focus on "what might have been," dragging out the old stories that Kennedy would have pulled us out of Vietnam, put men on the surface of Mars, balanced the budget and invented anti-gravity. Nonsense. The reality is that JFK was a charismatic but imperfect President. He probably would have been reelected but would continued to be dogged by a recalcitrant Congress - as most Presidents experience. But he lives on in our memories as a man with great ideas, pursued with "viggah!"
Writer/commentator Cal Thomas wrote eloquently about John F. Kennedy: "For some, all things seemed possible with Kennedy in the White House. When he died, most things seemed impossible. There was a sense we had been robbed of hope and hope denied produces cynicism and despair, two viruses that continue to plague our culture. Speaking as one who became a conservative and realizes that the 'myth' of Camelot was exactly that, I still miss him. Even more, I miss much that was good in American life that seems to have perished with him."
Rest In Peace, Jack.
