(This story is excerpted from Duck and Cover: Things Learned Waiting for the Bomb (c) 2025. Mark Munger. Find your copy under the “Books” tab on this website.)

DEAD LETTER                     

Davy Crockett stood tall in the midst of the Mexican horde. His musket was useless; there was no more powder, no more shot. He raised his heavy rifle by its barrel like an ax. Gunfire rang out. Travis was already dead. Bowie would not live more than a minute or two. Santa Anna was poised to enter the old mission at the head of his triumphant army.

            I sat on a braided rug in our basement, my knees curled beneath me in the flexibility of youth. I was absorbed in reliving the heroism of the Alamo. Pale blue figurines of molded plastic, historically accurate and detailed, surrounded the pressed tin walls of the fortress. Few Texans remained alive. I was a small boy of nine, talking softly to myself, carefully advancing Mexican soldiers towards destiny.

            Mom stood at the ironing board watching As the World Turns on an old black-and-white cabinet-style Admiral television. Her thin, blue-veined hands pushed and pulled the hot iron in no particular pattern as she tried to follow the parade of simulated domestic problems portrayed in front of her.

            It was a school day. I shouldn’t have been home. But it was November. I always get strep in November. That year was no exception. I stayed home, nursing my sore throat and the bruise on my butt from where Mom gave me a shot of penicillin.

            “What’re you doing?” Mom asked.

            “Playin’ Alamo,” I replied without looking up.

            “Who’s winning?”

            “Mexicans. Rotten old Santa Anna wins every time.”

            “Can’t you change it so the other side wins?”

            “Mom, that’s not what happened. That’d be cheating,” I said as dragoons galloped toward the beleaguered mission.

            “We interrupt our regular programming to bring you a special report,” a male voice said. The seriousness of the TV announcer’s tone forced Mom to focus on the flickering screen.

            “This morning in downtown Dallas, President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas were shot. Eyewitnesses say that both the President and the Governor were rushed to a Dallas hospital. The conditions of both men are unknown. Stay tuned to this station for further details.”

            “Oh my God!” Mom murmured, placing the iron on edge and cradling her face in her hands.

            “Is the President hurt bad, Mom?” As I spoke, I placed the figure of Santa Anna next to Davy Crockett. The tip of the Mexican’s saber nudged the frontiersman’s chest, foreshadowing Crockett’s demise.

            “We don’t know yet, Mark. Just pray it’s not bad. He’s such a good man. Remember seeing him at UMD?”

            I remembered. President Kennedy had been in town a month or two before the shooting to give a speech. My father was an official in the local Democratic party and I’d attended the historic event with my parents. I fell asleep in the bleachers of UMD’s gymnasium and didn’t hear the President’s address. Still, because the man was the President (his photo hung in our den like that of a saint) there wasn’t any need to remember his words: Whatever John Fitzgerald Kennedy said was gospel.

            As the afternoon lingered on, the news grew worse. Mom and I sat together on the braided rug listening raptly as reporters talked about bullets to the head and blood staining Mrs. Kennedy’s dress. Mom held me, embracing my sickly body, taking solace in the life she’d brought into the world. And then, we watched Walter Cronkite—his velvety voice cracking with grief—announce to the world that the President of the United States was dead.

            Mom rocked me in her arms. She did not speculate why the President had been shot. She did not contemplate whether the assassin would be found. Her thoughts were singular and were devoted to the brutal fact that the First Lady had been widowed and left alone to care for two small children.

            “What a horrible thing for those children,” Mom whispered, tears sliding down her young cheeks as she spoke.

            “Do you think I should write Mrs. Kennedy a letter ’bout not being too sad?” I asked, pulling away to look at Mom’s troubled face.

            “That would be very comforting,” Mom encouraged, her voice soft and tender.

            Leaving the defenders of the Alamo to their fate, I climbed the crude wooden staircase from the basement to the kitchen. Mom remained behind, immobilized by shock from the most horrific event she’d witnessed in her lifetime.

            I wrote a letter of condolence to the First Lady. After finishing the message, I lost the nerve to send it. Mom tucked the letter away, saving it for when I was older, for when I would understand.

            In the intervening decades, through the tumult of the Vietnam War and the deception of Watergate, that unsent letter remained in my scrapbook. Years later, I happened upon the letter and considered mailing it to Jackie (who’d remarried to become Mrs. Onassis). I thought it might serve some purpose for her to know that the children who witnessed her anguish had not forgotten. Instead, I did nothing.

            Then Jackie Onassis died. After reading about her funeral, I searched for the letter. My childhood missive to the First Lady was gone. It had disappeared, leaving me to ponder whether it’s possible to retrieve what has been lost.