The cold war chill I caught as a child is directly connected to events that happened sixty years ago today. The Cuban Missile Crisis gave me a case of nuclear jitters that have stayed with me ever since.
Now, just in time for this year’s 60th anniversary of that crisis, the cold war is being taken out of the deep freeze.
With Russian nuclear threats hanging over our heads, President Biden recently called the prospect of Armageddon the highest since that cold war crisis which nearly turned hot. The risk of atomic war has not been as real since 1962.
That chronic case of atomic anxiety that has chased me for 6 decades is being reactivated. I don’t know about the readiness state of our military, but my nuclear anxiety radar has moved into DEFCON 2 mode.
Seeing headlines like the one from Time Magazine asking ominously “Would Putin Roll the Nuclear Dice?” is déjà vu all over again. The dangerous game of nuclear chicken that was constantly played out between Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy, is not a game I ever want to witness again.
Though I’m just short of contemplating building a fallout shelter, memories of those terrifying times flood back.
Duck n’ Covering With Dick and Jane
Preparedness was as much a part of our school curriculum as reading and writing.
Even before those alarming 13 days in October, it was a time when most Americans assumed the U.S. and the Soviets stood continually on the brink of nuclear war.
During my first week of kindergarten in 1960 I was indoctrinated into the cold war world I would be growing up in.
That is if I would indeed actually get to grow up and not be incinerated.
Along with being given my very own Dick, Jane, and Sally workbook, I was issued a dog tag with my photo, address, and telephone number written on it that we were to wear in case of an attack for identification. Several years earlier, my suburban school district in Franklin Square N.Y. had developed a plan for evacuating elementary school kids in the event of a threatened enemy air raid upon N.Y.C. The school board felt this was a good idea.
A plastic Identification Dog Tag was issued to me in kindergarten 2 years before the Cuban Missile Crises in 1962
Unlike the shiny metal ones issued to GIs like my father, this one was a clear plastic case with paper inserted in between. That the flimsy case would melt immediately in the event of a nuclear attack proving it utterly useless, did not seem to cross the school committee’s mind.
Along with a pair of sturdy saddle shoes and a plaid jumper, the dog tag became part of my school uniform for the first few years of my elementary school life.
I quickly became accustomed to a school day filled with the ominous sound of the air raid drill alarm ringing every few weeks.
Duck n’ cover
At the sound of the alarm, like Pavlovian dogs sporting our dog tags, we would all jump out of our desks, kneel underneath them, hands clasped behind our necks, eyes closed, waiting for that imminent flash. Or at other times as the sound of the alarm, we would line up in size order, and walk silently out of the classroom to crouch in the hallways. With my eyes shut tightly in fear, the feel of the cold tiles would my last memory before the bomb hit.
I never forgot the lesson that our world could someday end in a flash of light and heat while we were crouched helplessly under our desks.
My cold war childhood filled with cold war warriors could easily have turned hot
In 1962 when I was in second grade it nearly did.
The Longest Day
Mom had already had her longest day dealing with the measles crisis when the Cuban Missile Crisis was announced. (R) Headline of N.Y. Daily News announcing the Cuban blockade
Monday, October 22, 1962 began as a sunny clear day. A burnish of autumn on the sycamore trees that lined my suburban block made everything look peaceful and predictable.
But inside my ranch house, things were anything but peaceful; I awoke that morning with a fever, sore throat, and blotchy skin. The early morning light streaming through my pink organza-draped windows burned my watery, red-rimmed eyes. With a sinking feeling about the telltale rash, my mother called the doctor. Within the hour my pediatrician came to our house toting his black, worn leather bag filled with instruments. After a quick exam performed while seated on my bed, Dr. King confirmed the diagnosis.
The spots had Deutschland written all over them – German Measles-Rubella.
As he placed his stethoscope back in his bag, he informed me that to prevent the spread of the very contagious disease, I would have to be quarantined. These German measles were quickly goose-stepping across my ravaged body, he chuckled to Mom, as fast as Hitler had raced across Europe.
I was to get back to bed mach schnell. And stay there.
Besides bed-rest, baby aspirin and fluids there was no cure. A big brown bottle of soothing Calamine lotion along with a suggestion to clip my fingernails to stop me from the inevitable scratching were the doctors’ best suggestions.
There was no debate about the merits of a vaccine because there were none. A vaccine would become available for measles in 1963, and a rubella vaccine wouldn’t exist until the end of the decade.
A Change of Plans
October 22 was also my parent’s 12th wedding anniversary.
Along with dinner at Le Maison Pepe a local French Bistro, they had planned on going to the movies that evening. In keeping with the French-inspired theme, they were eager to see The Longest Day, that star-studded spectacle about the invasion of Normandy.
But now that I was sick, Mom refused to leave me in the care of a babysitter and they canceled their plans.
But there was another incentive for my parents to stay home that evening. Like millions of Americans, they were anxious to watch President Kennedy’s live broadcast on television that night.
President John Kennedy addressed the nation on television informing us of the Cuban Missile Crisis
That noon while listening to the kitchen radio as Mom prepared lunch for me, there was a news bulletin. JFK’s press secretary Pierre Salinger had made a dramatic announcement that the president would speak that night “on a matter of the highest national urgency.”
The crisis that was brewing in Cuba that had begun a week earlier had been kept top-secret. Now with rumors circulating, there was a nearly unbearable sense of foreboding and tension.
Overhearing the worried tone of my parent’s conversation, I knew something serious was up. Across the country while Americans’ eyes would be fixed on their TV sets gripped in the most intense moment of recent history, I was confined to my bedroom without one. At a loss, I trained my ears to tune in to the console playing in the living room.
We Interrupt This Program…
John Fitzgerald Kennedy announcing on television the strategic blockade of Cuba, and his warning to the Soviet Union about missile sanctions during the Cuban missile crisis. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
At 7:00, I could hear the TV announcer from the popular game show based on the game charades saying: “Stump the Stars will not be seen tonight so that we can bring you this special broadcast….”
Along with 50 million other Americans my parents listened in pin-drop silence as President Kennedy spoke about Cuba. Sitting behind the ornate Resolute desk, a solemn President Kennedy got right to the point. This was no time to play charades.
He grimly announced to a shocked nation that Russia had snuck missiles into Cuba just 90 miles from Florida. Along with the Offensive Missiles, Khrushchev had deployed bombs and 40,000 Soviet troops.
The alarming evidence from photographs showed that nearly every city from Lima, Peru to Hudson Bay, Canada would lie within push-button range of thermonuclear bombs in Cuba.
Panic was about to go viral.
Every major US city would lie within push-button range of thermonuclear bombs in Cuba.
“To halt this offensive build-up,” a determined Kennedy said, “a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment to Cuba is being initiated.” The Navy’s mission was to block the flow of Russian weapons to Cuba.
The Russians would have a quarantine imposed on them, but my father wasn’t convinced this was the best tactic. It might work for preventing the spread of measles, he sniffed, but not for the missiles. If Russians didn’t withdraw the missiles as demanded, a U.S. pre-emptive strike against the launch site was inevitable.
The United States would not shrink from the threat of nuclear war to preserve the peace and freedom of the Western Hemisphere, Kennedy said firmly.
The President’s voice faded away as my parents turned to another channel to watch “I’ve Got a Secret.”
Struggling with the ramifications of what they just heard, the longest day was about to get a lot longer. Things were heating up and that was no secret.
I eyed my dog tag resting on my bedroom dresser. Padding across the room, I quietly slipped it over my cotton pajamas with the prancing lambs.
This was no longer a drill.