About the diary writer
- Barbara McDowell Whitt
- Kansas City, Missouri, Alexandria, Virginia, United States
- ~ About: A 1961-65 Park College Diary ~ As a high school girl and then a college coed in the first half of the 1960s, I wrote nightly entries on the pages of one-year diaries. In January 2010 I began transcribing the entries into a blog and gave each one a title. I grew up on three farms within 30 miles of Iowa City and the University of Iowa with its Iowa Writers' Workshop. As the oldest of four daughters, in my diaries I sometimes referred to my sisters as "the kids" or "the girls." We helped our parents, but we also had good, wholesome fun - a characteristic I took with me to Park. Park is 300 miles southwest of West Chester, Iowa, in Parkville, Missouri, on the Missouri River 10 miles northwest of Kansas City, Missouri, and across the river from Kansas City, Kansas. In 2000 Park College became Park University. Today Park's flagship campus is in Parkville and there are an additional 41 campus centers across the nation. Park was one of the first educational institutions in the United States to offer online learning. My last post was on May 22, 2018. I may be followed on Twitter @BarbaraMcDWhitt.
President Kennedy Will "Belong to the Ages" - Saturday, November 23, 1963
President Kennedy's funeral will be on Monday in Washington. He lay in state at the White House today. The new president has proclaimed Monday as a day of national mourning and public offices will be closed. Classes here have been cancelled from 10:00-12:00, and there weren't any today. The movie was cancelled tonight and we aren't having our open house tomorrow night. Radio and television have carried news almost constantly since yesterday at 12:30 when the shooting occurred. There is irony connected with several instances - Johnson is from Texas and was there when he became president. Also, Lincoln's successor was Johnson. Both Kennedy and Lincoln died in the fight for civil rights. I was reading what the papers of the world had to say. This will undoubtedly make Kennedy "belong to the ages." I studied - first Saturday afternoon this semester.
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2 comments:
So interesting. They have a whole list of Lincoln/Kennedy connections - I didn't realize how quickly those connections were realized. How did you see what the papers of the world said about it so quickly - was it in your paper? September 11 was my junior year of college. Interesting thinking about the similarities and differences of the coverage of a national tragedy.
Suzanne, I recall one afternoon when I was teaching third grade, one of my students (who had been a bit of a challenge - "Miss McDowell, I am not out. The ball didn't hit me." - when the class was playing dodge ball) later during "show and tell" mesmerized the other students and me by reciting a long list of Lincoln-Kennedy similarities that he had memorized. That was probably in the fall of 1965. And yes, the Kansas City Star published headlines and lead paragraphs from other papers of the world. I hadn't thought about the Kennedy assassination and September 11 happening in our junior years of college.
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