In 1962 I was 12 years old and just becoming aware of world affairs. Our family lived in a small town in northwest New Mexico, hardly a target for nuclear weapons, but we went about our daily lives with the awareness of the Russians and the threat of nuclear destruction. In school we had practiced the drills – hide under your desk if we are attacked! I was really nervous with all the heightened anxiety – everyone was scared, and it showed.
We studied the newspapers intently each day, eagerly seeking reassurance, only to grow more alarmed by news of recent developments, and the uneasy relations between the United States and Russia. Then in October, things took a frightening turn. My parents tried to appear calm as we watched the blockade because of the Cuban missiles unfold in vivid black and white, right there before us on the television.
Television added an immediacy that I had never experienced before – these events were live, this was happening now! In school we walked the halls nervously, greeting each other with forced smiles, trying to appear nonchalant. Our teachers were more easily upset than usual.
One day after school, a friend and I were playing outdoors when the cloud filled western sky turned to brilliant pink and red hues – another gorgeous New Mexico sunset. My friend convinced me that the Russians had bombed and that this was the beginning of nuclear fallout. I ran home in a panic, believing that it had happened, and wanting to know – needing to know – what were we supposed to do next? We didn’t have a fallout shelter, so instead of hiding under a desk, should we go in a closet? What could protect us against the rain of nuclear fallout? Were we all about to die?
My parents had to talk with me for quite some time before I began to calm down. No, there hadn’t been a bombing. No, that red sky wasn’t nuclear fallout. I believed them – sort of – but it was a long time after the missiles had been removed before I could really relax. After the events of October 1962, I lived with a gut awareness of how close it had been, and what that would have meant.
Be sure to visit the JFK Library’s interactive documentary website Clouds Over Cuba.
This post is sponsored by the JFK Library
I remember this. I was 9, and living in Missouri. On my school bus ride every morning and afternoon, we passed a couple of corn fields that had missle silos poking up out of the ground in the middle of the corn. My dad was a minister in those days, preaching end-times and hellfire and brimstone every Sunday from his pulpit. We had no TV in our house, because my dad had decided that television was a tool of the devil, so he got rid of ours when I was 4. How I missed Mighty Mouse and Captain Kangaroo! But we still listened to the news on the radio, and the daily newspaper was delivered to ou front rporch each morning.
When the Cuban Missle Crises happened, my parents had the radio turned up loud. Dad said to get down on our knees and prepare our hearts for Christ’s Second Coming. The anti-Christ was in the White House already, that was what my father believed when his beloved Barry Goldwater lost to Kennedy.
Our school had drills almost every day during the crisies with Cuba. We lived in a town that had been leveled by a tornado about 30 years before I was born, so we already had weekly tornado drills. We had a special alarm to signal a tornado, another alarm to signal a fire, and in 1962 my elementary school added a third special alarn, for nuclear war alarm. Rather than duck under our desks, we were told to go into the hall and roll ourselves into a ball on the floor against the wall with our arms over our heads. This was apparently considered safer than staying in the classroom with the wall of windows.
I remember having several dreams during that time about the world ending, with the Lord appearing on the clouds wearing a jeweled crown and holding a golden sceptor in his right hand. In my most vivid and terrifying dream I was walking along a street in our neighborhood one evening when I saw a huge, very bright red-orange flash low to the ground off to my right. I stopped and looked in that direction, and I saw a slow-moving wall of air coming toward me, rolling and tumbling everything in its wake, cars, street lights, me…. I was flung up into the air, then slammed back down, hitting the side of my head on something hard. From where I was lying on the ground I was still looking in the direction from where the bright flash and the wall of air had originated, and as I looked I saw a second wall of air, this one moving much more rapidly than the first, and instead of tumbling and rolling things, it was obliterating everything in its path. When this wave hit me, I could feel my body explode. There was no pain, nor was there any sound, but I felt like every part of my being was suddenly stretched in every direction as far as it could stretch, and then it kept stretching beyond that, until nothing was left of me but my ghostly spirit. I was standing in the midst of all the destruction, when I woke up.
Sometimes I wonder, with all the horrific shootings going on, if times are more evil now than they were then? But I then I think: No, it’s always been this way. The Halocaust, the Crusades… as far back as human history, we have been killing each other. It’s a hard world we live in, but also, I firmly believe, a wonderful world. All we need is more compassion. Less shame, less self-righteous know-it-all judging of one another, and more humility, more empathy, and a whole lot more love.
WOW - sounds like you had an intensely personal experience of the crisis. With missile silos on the way to school, and a preacher father predicting the end of the world, no wonder it was a horrific experience for you. Thanks for sharing how it was during that time for you!