JFK

1963 began lightheartedly enough for me with the best-selling comedy album, Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family,” a parody of President John F. Kennedy in the White House, playing in my home, the record having arrived as a holiday present. The year ended in devastation after Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22 and the subsequent crumbling of Camelot.

As a 12-year-old boy, Eric Holder watched on a small black-and-white television in the basement home of his Barbadian parents in the Queens section of New York City as John F. Kennedy spoke to the nation.