Eric Taylor brought me a treasure, a scrapbook from the Snohomish County Museum. Its cover, the museum director said, belies the contents.
That’s an understatement.
The pictures on the book’s leatherette cover are like those early-’60s teens pictured on Pee-Chee folders. Soda shop kids on the scrapbook are after-school versions of the Pee-Chee tennis player and relay runner. They are cultural icons of a simpler time.
To sniff the book’s old paper and glimpse its entries is to relive what those of us old enough to remember will never forget — Nov. 22, 1963. Forty years ago this week, that simpler time came to an end.
Page by page, grainy newspaper photo after photo, the story is told of the young president and his beautiful wife, the day of infamy in Dallas, the swearing in of a new president, the suspect charged and then slain, and the horse-drawn caisson bearing the body of John F. Kennedy to Arlington National Cemetery.
There is more, from articles about "Mrs. J.D. Tippet," widow of the policeman killed in the capture of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, to a Life magazine from Nov. 29, 1963, that cost 25 cents.
"It came into the museum in 1989," Taylor said of the scrapbook. "People don’t want to throw things away. They realize when an item is of some significance."
The museum lists the scrapbook donor as Lena Burden of Everett, and there is a mention of her brother, Sargo Giss. Taylor knew little about them, except that a donation form indicates Giss attended Harvard University.
Because of the scrapbook style, Taylor wondered if Burden might have been a young girl when she meticulously arranged pages by category — the assassination, the funeral, the children, the shooter Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby, and the aftermath with President Lyndon Johnson.
No, Burden would have been in her late 40s in 1963, said Marie Larson of Edmonds, Lena Burden’s niece.
"I think she’s 89 this year," Larson said, adding that her aunt lives in a care facility in Renton. Larson knew nothing of the scrapbook, but believes Burden must have given it to the museum when she moved from her Everett home.
On Camano Island, Ronald Giss confirmed that his father earned a degree in business from Harvard. "He was born in 1918 and was an Everett High School graduate. The Harvard yearbook I have is from 1942. The scrapbook is new to me," said Giss, whose father died in 1979.
I learned precious little about a woman so touched by the Kennedy assassination that she created her own 140-page history book. But in seeing those photographs again on 40-year-old newsprint, I knew instantly how she felt — how we all felt.
In 1963, I was in fourth grade at Jefferson Elementary School in Spokane. I saved The Spokane Daily Chronicle, stashing the newspaper for safekeeping in a picture book of presidents.
My story is like everyone’s from that day: The world seemed to stop.
Taylor, 55, lived in Billings, Mont. "It happened when I was going to lunch at the cafeteria at the high school," he said. "All the teachers had portable radios up to their ears. It was after baseball season, so that made no sense.
"We were glued to the TV set for the weekend," Taylor said.
"I worked for a TV and appliance shop in Edmonds," said Larson. "When it happened, we had all the televisions on. We were just glued to the television, and then everything was closed for a few days. Everything came to a standstill."
Ronald Giss was in school on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. "I was around 13, in world history class," he said. "They announced it over the school telephone system.
"Everything just came to a halt. It was more a sense of gloom, not of panic as 9-11 was. These were two extremely different events," Giss said. "I had a feeling things were under control. It was a very orderly progression, and very serious mourning."
We were different ages and in different places. But there’s no difference in how we remember the time a headline in the scrapbook describes as a "Weekend That Shook the World."
Museum director Taylor, who sees every day all the things people save, understands what caused someone far from Dallas or Washington, D.C., to spend hours clipping and preserving the shocking news.
"It’s evidence of one person’s grief," he said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or
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