The murder of John Lennon by the psychotic Mark David Chapman was truly a low-point in New York City history. While the event certainly wasn’t as significant as the assassination of JFK, nor certainly as monumental as the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet it was equally unforgettable in the hearts and minds of those of us who grew-up in the 60s.
The night of the murder, my first wife and I were sitting quietly if discontentedly at home. She sitting gorgeously at one end of the couch, me less gorgeously at the other end; fortunately, by happy accident or clever design, we had a large and even more gorgeous couch. Bored with each other, we still managed to find endless fascination and delight in spirited debates and ruminations over what we were doing tied together. This, however, wasn’t one of those nights and we eagerly resigned ourselves to watching Monday Night Football. I forget who was playing but I remember that I was deeply interested in the game that had reached the fourth quarter when a Special Report brought the unofficial then official report that John Lennon had been killed. My wife and I were in tears; for a fleeting moment she looked liked she did when I first knew her, eight years earlier in high school…she was my first love, but we were both very young and probably imagined we would remain like that forever.
Lennon’s death was a turning point in the psyches of many baby boomers like us (living, for the most part, middle-class lifestyles: leisurely protesting war and erratically taking-up various causes, secure within our dream-cushioned pretensions), fancying that our mere idealistic goals could ultimately alter reality and vanquish evil. We came to realize that Lennon’s song “Imagine” was only a song built on creative inspiration; and that if legends could die, so could we…in spite of our idle causes and cherished dreams.
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