40 years ago: clicking into place

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was felled by an assassin. The event flooded the news. Oddly, while I remember the very place and moment I was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I have only vague and fuzzy memories of Dr. King on the day he died, almost as though they were not really my memories, but memories acquired from the news later, rather than lived through, so to speak.


It is only now that this minor puzzle is put to rest; You might say I was "preoccupied." My father sent the following pictures:

my mother, early 1940s



pregnant with her first born, 1949.


with family, late 1954.


Shirley Gross, April 3, 1928 - April 4, 1968
Beloved mother, you gave your all, and at the end, turned to Him through whom all things were made, that with this life ending you might enter Life unending. with our Blessed Mother, pray for us who still wander in this valle of tears.