Wow, Ripper. We both have a lot of the same memories.

My family was Republican, yours was Democrat. And now, here we are. Fighting the same fight, sharing the same memories.

How freaking cool is that?

Wonderful post. Highly rec'd.

We had just moved to CA when JFK visited the Navy base that summer, the same year he fell. I was babysitting the coaches kids at a probate school in MD the day MLK was shot. Divorce sent me back to CA for the RFK assassination. Hope I'm not jinxed, realizing all that as I write it down. 1972 was my first election for the vote also. Boy, the fights with my Dad. He nows sends me all the Obama articles out of his Newsweek.

It's not the party of Ike any more. I could not agree with Susan any more, and her big concern is the old Soviet sphere. She is fearful of the "hammer because everything looks like nail" approach to blustering that both Bush and McCain have taken in all areas of foreign policy. The Rove-style policies of personal destruction is not the way to run our foreign policy was the point I took from her post.

OUTSTANDING RIPPER! Hope many more see this and pass it along.

PLEASE tell us some more!

Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate in my lifetime to give me the same sort of life-lesson moments that lead to understanding.

Odd as it sounds, I have come to know myself and my fellow Americans by learning more about Barack Obama and by following this election. Make feel secure in my optimism!

Nice word pictures.

I was in Miss Hanson's second grade class at our brand spanking new Worthridge school when the principal came on the PA to call all the teachers down to his office that day in November 1963. A few minutes later a visibly shaken Miss Hanson came back to class and announced we were all being sent home early, the president had been shot, and we were to go to straight home. Walking those 6 blocks my friends and I were sure it was the work of the Russians and this meant World War 111 was about to start. At the age of 7 we didn't really know what that meant but we'd never seen the teachers so distraught before so we knew it couldn't be good.

All that weekend we watched the funeral procession on our black and white tv, the incessant beat of the drums, little John saluting the casket as it passed, Jackie in her veil. They reran the scenes nonstop.

On March 31, 1968 I watched LBJ make his "I Shall Not Seek, and I Will Not Accept" speech with my Republican father. My dad hated LBJ and I was 12 so I hated LBJ. As Johnson began to talk I mocked him hoping to goad my dad into changing the channel. The big ugly Texan and his Johnny Reb drawl was making another boring speech and I was sure there must be something better on. My father told me to shut up, the president was speaking and I was to respect the office. So we watched.

Less than a week later I was confirmed in the Episcopalian church at the big cathedral in Chicago. On the way there we sat in the car silently at an intersection in the city for what seemed like an hour waiting for what looked like the entire Illinois National Guard to pass by in speeding big olive drab Army 4x4 trucks, rifles at the ready, on their way to the West Side. I noticed my mother gripping the dashboard with both hands, her knuckles white. Martin Luther King was murdered the day before and a lot of the West Side was burning to the ground. Some of those lots remain blighted and empty today.

Two months later I was at my new school in Downers Grove in 6th grade. We'd moved the year before. It was the last day of the school year if I remember correctly and we discussed Bobby Kennedy's assassination when were let out early with our report cards on a bright sunny day. It was senseless. While still a nascent Republican I couldn't figure why this Jordanian man killed RFK out of fear for his allegiance to Israel. RFK was for peace in Vietnam, surely he wasn't for more war in the middle east.

I was pretty sick of and very confused by these assassinations. I just wanted them to stop.

That summer I watched the Democratic convention in Chicago, 30 miles away on TV, again with my dad. My father was never a fan of Mayor Richard J. Daley. He was an arrogant ass merely interested in amassing as much power as he could for himself as far as dad was concerned, I of course agreed. We watched the police riot. Together we saw them gleefully wade into the crowd bludgeoning anyone within reach with their clubs. I watched dad's reaction, he was as troubled by what we saw as I was. The next day I went to school and heard tales from a classmate whose 17 year old brother came home with his head wrapped in bandages. That night Dad and I watched Mayor Daley's infamous "the police aren't there to create disorder, they're there to preserve disorder" press conference. He pulled out baggies of feces as "proof" that his men were provoked by the demonstrators.

Right then is where I began coming of age politically and thinking for myself. My father accepted Daley's explanation for what we witnessed live on television the night before wholeheartedly. I guess he needed that reassurance from a authority figure even if he he reviled him. I was amazed. I couldn't believe it. I argued with him to no avail. We both saw what happened but he refused to believe his own eyes and instead bought the excuses.

I still believed in Nixon's "secret plan to end the war". If I had had the vote that fall I would have voted for him right along with my parents. I remember my mother's angst, she was tired of voting for losers. Once elected it wasn't long before Nixon's plan went by the wayside and I started growing my hair long.

Within a year my parents couldn't understand me any better than they understood Abby Hoffmann.

My dad and I didn't agree on politics again for decades though we'd argue all the time. He thought Nixon was railroaded out of office. Reagan, from western Illinois like him was his hero. No appeals to decency or common sense would change his mind. Nothing I ever said got through.

I knew he voted for Obama in 2004 for senator but that was no test, his opponent Alan Keyes was nuts. Even my Republican congresswoman all but admitted she voted for Barack in that election.

But about a year ago, suffering from aphasia and unable to speak Dad came into my office with a Obama fundraising letter in his hand addressed to me. Pointing to his chest he made it clear he wanted to me to help him contribute to the campaign. Happily I took his debit card and sent in $50 in his name. Dad died in April but I still get emails from the Obama campaign addressed to him. So when I can I double up on donations for both of us. I know he'd approve.