JFK's assassination 47 years ago remains vivid in the minds of many
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/JFK-s-assassination-47-years-ago-remains-vivid-in-824840.php
Meg Barone
November 21, 2010
STRATFORD -- The sky was gray and cloudy, the wind turbulent on the
cold November afternoon that George Mihai made his way out to
Stratford Point 47 years ago.
The conditions matched the mood of the nation that had buried its
beloved, young president three days before. "It was a dreary day,"
said Mihai, 86, who had left his home in Bridgeport on that
Thanksgiving afternoon on Nov. 28, 1963 to find a place for quiet
reflection. He, like so many other Americans, was shaken to the core
by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as his motorcade
traveled through Dealey Plaza in Dallas on Nov. 22.
"You can't really escape the feeling of that day. Almost everybody
you looked at was crying," said Mihai, who resides in Hamden. Mihai
was working as a weigh master clerk at the city's west side
incinerator when he learned JFK was shot.
There was irony in Mihai's choice of Stratford Point to seek
tranquility in the midst of tragedy. The place where he parked to
look out on the peaceful scene of the Stratford Point Lighthouse and
Long Island Sound was the property that housed the Remington Gun
Club. It hadn't crossed his mind. Like Kennedy, Mihai had served in
the U.S. Navy and is a veteran of World War II. He turned to the sea
for solace and to the lighthouse as a beacon of hope in that dark hour.
Mihai was an amateur artist at the time, who later became a
professional embroiderer. He did work on jackets for "The Effect of
Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," directed by Paul Newman and
filmed in Bridgeport, and embroidered plaques for Bridgeport mayors
John Mandanici and Nick Panuzio.
He brought with him to Stratford Point a canvas and paints. "On top
of the lighthouse was a weathervane, which looked like a cross,"
Mihai said. "It also pointed out a direction, a course to follow," he
said, which gave him comfort.
Later that night, President Lyndon Johnson served as the weathervane
of the mourning country, saying, in part, in his Thanksgiving message
"A great leader is dead; a great Nation must move on. Yesterday is
not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose. I am
resolved that we shall win the tomorrows before us. So I ask you to
join me in that resolve, determined that from this midnight of
tragedy, we shall move toward a new American greatness."
As Mihai painted the lighthouse and the American flag on the pole
beside it, whipping in the wind at half staff, he envisioned Kennedy.
"I felt Kennedy all the way through it," he said. That inspired him
to include Kennedy's visage in the seascape.
As dusk approached and Mihai was finishing his painting the beacon
atop the lighthouse flashed on and he decided to name his painting
"Eternal Light," Mihai said the title "bespeaks a ray of hope amid
sullenness and dismay." In the lower left side he painted a ribbon
and inscribed these words about Kennedy: "With greatness he guided
our ship of state."
"When he was assassinated we lost a great man. When he became
president things started to work out. I could feel it. I thought the
world of that man, Kennedy. I thought he was destined to be the man
we really needed. He was a good man in my eyes," said Mihai, who is
convinced Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.
"There are still a lot of questions. Someone just didn't want him
around," he said.
Mihai had a chance to meet Kennedy in 1960 when then-Senator Kennedy,
as a presidential candidate, made a campaign stop in Bridgeport.
"Nice guy. I was able to shake his hands. That was the only time I
saw him in person," he said.
Mihai said he sold about 3,000 prints of his painting, including
dozens in an unlikely place -- Howland department store in downtown
Bridgeport. Mihai brought 57 framed prints to the clothing store and
asked the manager to sell them. "At first he turned me down." Hours
later, when he returned home, his wife told him he got a call from a
man at Howland. "He had sold them all, all 57," Mihai said.
Mihai had grown up in Exeter. Pa., and joined the service in 1943
after his high school graduation. "There was nothing to do in
Pennsylvania. Coal mines, but I wasn't going into the coal mines," he
said. Instead, Mihai found himself in the English Channel on D-Day
delivering supplies for those who would later be on the front lines.
"We set up pontoons and we were shipping stuff and building stuff for
the guys who were going in on the first wave. I saw a bomb fly over
my head. I could read the letters on it," said Mihai, who was injured
during WW II and is a member of the Disabled American Veterans.
After the war, Mihai followed his brother Michael Mehai to
Bridgeport. (George and Michael spelled their last name differently.)
Mihai's first job was at Metropolitan Body on Kossuth Street.
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