JFK’s Assassination and 9-11
An unlikely association of two historical events in modern US History, JFK’s assassination and 9-11 are not part of a conspiracy theory but rather two catastrophic events the many citizens worldwide remember vividly.
About 25 years ago, I happened to be in New York City on November 22nd. I was there to visit two important clients that had their offices near the city: Travel Impressions and Gogo Tours. One was located in Farmingdale, New York, the other in Ramsey, New Jersey. After by business meetings I was attending a travel trade show by Travel Impressions in Newark and then traveling on to Heathrow to the World Travel Mart. As any regular nut born in Mexico City, the idea of renting a car and driving across Manhattan was not the least bit intimidating, so upon arrival in JFK I proceeded to go the Budget Rent a Car office and rented myself a car to get myself around the Big Apple. After spending the night at one of the airport hotels in Newark, I was to drive across the Hudson and into Manhattan and on to JFK. It turns out that I was late departing and got stuck in the rush hour traffic. As the time passed I started to get nervous about missing my plane, and so I turned on the radio to try to distract myself and lower the stress. It turns out that every single radio station in New York City was talking about JFK’s assassination, and people were calling in to share their impressions, and what they were doing on that fatidic date. Since I was born in 1958, and am a Mexican Citizen, I can honestly not recall the incident, I was only 5 years old at the time this historic murder, but I was certainly amazed at how people recalled exactly what they were doing, where they were and who they were with when they got news of this terrible event.
14 years ago, on September 11, I was on the island of Roatan visiting clients and selling ads for my magazine, Honduras Tips. I walked into the local Remax office, located at Bormac Plaza, at the entrance to French Harbour. Internet service was still a novelty in Honduras, and getting access to your email was not easy, but Remax had an internet café in their facilities, and I needed to check my email and at the same time visit my client, Remax. As I walked into the office I was greeted with several employees who had a look of grief on their faces: “An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center” in New York City!” they blurted out to me…
My first reaction was that it must have been a small airplane, with a pilot that did not have much experience or had just had a stroke. As it turned out, I was not able to check my email, the internet service had collapsed as everyone around the world was trying to get up to date news. As the day continued, I would get bits of information here and there. At one point, when visiting Sandy Bay Rent a Car, in Sandy Bay, I ended up sitting in the living room with David, the owner, both of us dumfounded watching the news. What a stressful day it ended up being!
JFK’s assassination and 9-11 are two events that surely all United States citizens can not only recall, but actually remember where they heard the news and who they were with. Of course for some reason we all tend to remember more about the bad things than the good. For example, I do not remember where I was or who I was with when the Berlin Wall fell, I do remember watching man land on the moon in the TV room with my parents, in a black and white TV, feeling that for sure, by the time I had kids, flying saucers like the one in “Lost in Space” would be a reality.
I truly hope that mankind can get their act together and that we can avoid more catastrophic events like that of JFK’s assassination and 9-11. Unfortunately, as I write this, there are many migrants and refugees throughout the World, who are probably living an event that they will mark them for the rest of their lives…
