The Missiles of October

I hope the creators of the movie don’t mind my borrowing the title for this post, but I’m too lazy to think of anything clever, and of course, now you know what this is about.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being now old enough to play the “I was there” game, this is what I remember about it.

In those days, I was a student at one of those fancy New England prep schools, at which I received a great education, partly because TV wasn’t really an option. The television was in the housemaster’s quarters, and only rarely were we allowed to watch. Certain exceptions were made occasionally, though, for stuff like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the days in question were unusual. There was one night -- October 22 -- when we were required to watch TV. We all assembled in the various housemasters’ apartments around the school to hear JFK deliver his now-famous address to the nation, warning the Russians not to station missiles in Cuba. You can find this easily on YouTube, but here’s an especially memorable line:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that gets your attention! Sounds like something Harrison Ford might say, and probably has said, in one of his movies. But this was no movie. Nowadays, people who worry about the end of the world are considered one beer short of a six-pack, as they say – but for a few days, we actually had to consider it a real possibility.

I don’t remember much else about the experience at school. The headmaster was a minister, and there were daily chapel services we were required to attend, and the sermons at that time, as you can expect, were pretty heavy. And as President Kennedy actually had attended the school himself as a student, his address had a special meaning for us.

Since I’m able to write this, the world did not end. The Russian boats turned around. While the President got kudos for standing up to the Soviets, we all know now that there was a backroom deal: our own missiles in Turkey, which upset the Russians, had to go away. Even so, those are the times when you really appreciate a President with a brain.

As for movies, well, we needed some lightening up, and Stanley Kubrick gave us “Dr. Strangelove” a few years later. As I recall, it wasn’t until 1974, though, that “The Missiles of October” was shown on TV, and by then I was old enough to decide for myself what to watch. All I can tell you is, no actor has ever done as good a JFK as Bill Devane.