This special report reviews the day's developments in the Cuban missile crisis. Walter Cronkite announces the signing of the formal proclamation of the quarantine of Cuba. The report continues with a clip of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's press conference at the Pentagon, and a clip of an exchange between U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson and Soviet U.N. Ambassador V.A. Zorin. Cronkite displays aerial photographs of missile sites followed by a report on a military build-up in Key West; Neil Strawser reports on the build-up at the American naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba; George Herman reports on the crisis' meaning for the Kennedy administration, and Roger Mudd reports on aerial reconnaissance of Cuba. October 23, 1962, Tuesday 11:15 PM. This was the first and last time I ever saw my father shake, look around the living room filled with my family, my mother, my three sisters, and me. This was the first time and only time I heard my father, the pillar of our home, the person from which all safety and sanity originated, MY safeguard against anything evil and vile, stand up looking at his family, my family and say, “I am afraid, this IS the first time I am afraid!”
To this day, I can recount, recall, and remember, a pit in my stomach which seemed endless, agonizing, and horrific. My father was afraid, and if he was afraid, who then might protect us, PROTECT US from some impending doom, from which even Walter Cronkite, THE VOICE of REASON and CALM, seemed frightened of and at a loss for words!
It is Wednesday, August 26, 2020, a 17-year-old kid owns an assault weapon and shoots two protestors, demanding justice from sheer racist policies by the police. One more member of the Trump Team and Trump breaks a Federal Law. A Republican convention becomes nothing but a Fascist commercial to promote AUTHORITARIANISM. And an American public still clings to every word, every piece of propaganda and lie Trump tells, and no one of any authority seems able to stop a mad man from creating havoc, and chaos, doom, and destruction.
I am afraid. I now understand my father standing in the middle of our living room shaking, sweaty almost experiencing an out of body sensation, feeling so out of control as to state he was afraid. My father then said, “No matter what we will remain resilient, and alive, but we must never forget this moment when the future seems as if it just disappeared!
