College was a rather alien concept to my parents. Somehow whenever I left home, time was suspended until I returned. My life went on at school but not so much in their minds. I was in Albany on November 22, 1963. As dorm president, it was my duty to tell my dormmates that the dance they were so looking forward to was cancelled. It was a bear of a decision because of the excitement level and all the work that had gone into it but the absolute only proper decision to make. That entire week was consumed with sadness. Our President … the President whose youth, good looks and charisma fueled our generation to do great things … to go into the Peace Corps … to give politics a second thought … to be the best we could be … our President was dead. we didn’t know it then but he was the first of three of our heroes to take an assassin’s bullet. We crowded around a single black and white television to see Mrs. Kennedy’s bloody pink suit, the swearing in of the abrasive Texan VP as our new President … we cried as the caissons carried our JFK’s body along Pennsylvania Avenue and our young hearts ached as baby JohnJohn saluted the casket … We watched and we felt every emotion that America felt. And, when I made my weekly call to home, my mother asked if I had heard that President Kennedy was dead. I had heard.