JFK’s School : To Most Students, He’s a Distant Figure

Nov. 22, 1988, wasn’t just another day at Kennedy High School, it was Careers Day. And the 25th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“I know about him,” Salvador Rios, 17, said. “He’s the one who said: ‘Don’t ask what your country can do for you guys. . . . ‘ “

These students--born 8, 10, 12 years after Kennedy’s death--attend a high school that proudly claims to be the first in the nation to be named after JFK. The La Palma school was under construction in 1963 when Kennedy was killed, and prospective students moved by his death petitioned the school board to scrap the planned name, Centralia High School, and honor the fallen President instead.

A quarter of a century has passed, but it might as well have been a millennium. To students today, Kennedy is a page in a history book, a television mini-series. A 3-minute taped narrative about Kennedy and his mythic presidency was sandwiched between morning announcements at the school Tuesday, but there were no special observances of the anniversary.

‘Historical President’

“The kids view Kennedy like they view Abraham Lincoln,” said math teacher Larry Buie, a member of Kennedy High School’s first graduating class and one of the students who circulated petitions to rededicate the school 25 years ago.

“He’s an historical president, not a real person,” Buie said. “When you’re 14, history is last week.”

Kennedy memorabilia is everywhere at his namesake school. A portrait painted by a cafeteria worker hangs in the administration office, and Kennedy quotations cast in brass ring the Senior Circle, an outdoor gathering spot that is off limits to underclassmen. His likeness beams from two tapestries in the student activities office. And his famous call to action, slightly misquoted, greets visitors at the school entrance: “Ask not what your country can do for you . . . but, ask what you can do for your country.” (There was no “but” in the original quotation.)

But Kennedy’s achievements and failings are a mystery to most students at Kennedy High School.

“I learned a lot of stuff about him, but I can’t really remember,” Christina Saladana, 14, offered after a moment’s consideration. “He was a good president.”

“He was shot by that Harvey Oswald guy,” freshman Stephanie Simkins added.

“And he was against communism,” Denise Flores, 14, said.

The 25th anniversary of Kennedy’s death was news to Mike Lun, 16. “Didn’t he get assassinated in 1936?” the blond junior asked.

Larry Buie shook his head. He still looks a lot like the 17-year-old who grins crookedly from Kennedy High School’s 1965 yearbook, and he still feels profoundly affected by Kennedy’s life and death.

“Kennedy appealed to young people of my generation because of his age and his energy and his ideals,” Buie said. “When he died, everybody at school just sat at their tables and cried.”

Collected 4,000 Names

Students started circulating petitions seeking to name the school for Kennedy the day after the assassination, and within a week, more than 4,000 signatures had been collected. It was the kind of activism that Kennedy had preached, but “his message of humanitarian ideals has faded,” Buie said.

Peter Montera, the quarterback on Kennedy High School’s Fighting Irish football team, rested his chin atop his fist and pondered what Kennedy meant to him.

“Nothing, really,” he said finally. “I know he started up the Peace Corps. But people make him better than he really was. Since he died, people like him better.”

But Michelle Lo, born a decade after Kennedy’s death, said: “I miss him even though I never knew him. He made the nation feel like we were great when he was alive.”

Asked what Kennedy would be like if he were alive today, she brightened. “He’d be old,” she said.

In a nearby classroom, history teacher Scott Burns told students to “ask your parents what they were doing 25 years ago today--they’ll remember.”

Same Age as Students

A television camera operator who had come to film the class discussion for the evening news panned students’ faces as Burns recounted his own feelings on that day. Burns was a junior in high school--the same age as his students--when he watched the lowering of his school’s U.S. flag and realized that President Kennedy was dead.

The poignancy of the moment, the death of America’s charismatic “television President,” was lost on the television generation.

“Are we going to be on TV?” a girl asked. “What channel?”