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The social impact Age of innocence, optimism came to an end By SHEILA TAYLOR Dallas Morning Newt Writer DALLAS In many ways, the early '60s seemed more of a mopping up period for the "American Graffiti" world of the '50s than the herald of the revolutionizing '60s. The new mecca of glamor was the nation's capital, where a boyish-looking president and an elegant first lady had caught America's attention. Marriage was big, skirts short and ties narrow. Teen age movie-goers watched Annette Funlcello and Frankie Avalon cavort on the beach. We read Mary McCarthy's "The the story of a Vassar clique one of whom, shockingly, became a lesbian.

And we read Betty Friedan. Murmurs of discontent were coming from "the restless ladies who want more," as Time termed 1963 feminists. "Life" also held portent of the tumult to come in Theodore White's article, "Racial Collision in the Big Cities." But the '60s before the assassination of John F. Kennedy seemed mostly an age of emotional virginity an age of innocence and optimism that would end with the decade. "The time of innocence for this grorrallon, In Hi own mind, ended November 22, 1N3." Landon Y.

Jones, "Great Eipeclatlont" Three years after the publication of his study of the Baby Boom generation, Jones, a senior editor at People magaiine, says he believes the ussussina tion had more impact on Americans' lives than on American society. Especially for those who were between 6 and 16 In 1963, Jones considers the assassination as one ol a pair of bookends that set apart a period and a way of thinking The other half, marking the end, is the assassination ol John Lennon. When Lennon was killed, they said, Now we nave to grow up. Our youth has he says. While John Kennedy's assassination had a deep psy etiological impact, Robert Kennedy's had deep political impact, Jones says now "The Baby Boomers were older, then.

They said, 'Now I'm going to be a But the JFK assassination was the most mesmerizing moment ol their youth "This was the television generation, and here was the ultimate television event All Americans were affected, to be sure, but the impact fell heaviest on the young people who had grown up watching a vigorous young president. They knew him Intimately, because he was the first president to become a TV star," Jones says HE ALSO BELIEVES that the assassination looms so large in the minds of the Baby Boomers that "they have distorted time as if in the funhouse mirror of memory Events before the assassination receded as rapidly as II seen through the wrong end of a telescope." Jones says it is no coincidence that the Class of '64 was the one that gave the SAT scores the first shove Into a 17-year decline. The students took the exam the same year that they saw the most appalling event of their lives up to that point. In February 1964, three months after the assassination, America's young people had what Landon Jones called "the first good news since the the Beatles' American debut. They appeared on Ed Sullivan's show and gave concerts in Washington's coliseum and New York's Carnegie Hall.

Their lively music antagonized parents, delighted the Baby Boomers and revolutionized popular music. "We were ready for Jones says. national greatness." The effect of Kennedy's first official words to the nation is also emphasized by James David Barber, a Duke University political scientist and author of The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House. "He came around after the lethargy of the Eisenhower era and brought challenge and rousing rhetoric to people to make contributions." Until Nov. 22, 1963, though, Kennedy's words were mostly that rhetoric to most young people of the day.

The Peace Corps bad attracted thousands of young Americans, but life for the others went on much as it had throughout the "50s. Changes would come, however and with them, anti war demonstrations, sit-ins, race riots, campus takeovers, marches, women's liberation, families split by opposing political and philosophical views. In retrospect, many consider the assassination the catalyst for the turmoil of the next decade, but some professional observers of the era say that assumption is an oversimplification. The assassinations started with John but not the movements that in many ways influenced the next decade. "They (the movements) had many more powerful causes than the Kennedy assassination," says David Riesman, Harvard sociologist and author of "The Lonely Crowd." He says that Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968 had a greater impact on youth than that of his brother.

"Robert Kennedy had more influence among young people and more followers," he says. STANLEY ROTHMAN, A Smith College government professor and co-author of "Roots of Radicalism," agrees with Riesman that the assassination of John Kennedy did not have exceptional impact on young people. "The assassination was a great dismay, certainly, but the whole round of assassinations was more than JFK's alone," he says. "They reduced faith in American institutions and reduced 'he kind of optimism Americans traditionally had. "There was an enormous wave of emotion after the assassination," Rothman adds.

"Most Americans wept over the death of someone they didn't know, which revealed an emotional connection with this young president. Many thought it had to do with the charisma of a young president, but this happened with every America president who died in The typical reaction is that of survivors In combat or anywhere." The public generally would become both more realistic and more fatalistic about assassination with Robert Kennedy's death. Kennedy aide Lawrence O'Brien re members his reactions: "When I was with Bobby in Los Angeles, when he stepped into the kitchen and the shots were fired, I Immediately concluded that was it. It was the reverse of the reaction I had in Dallas. My first reaction then was that he (John Kennedy) hadn't been hit.

And then you felt, well, perhaps he had been hit but he wasn't seriously wounded." Along with seriously damaging the nation's optimism, analysts say, the assassination contributed to its sense of vulnerability. POLITICAL COMMENTATOR Jeff Greenfield writes: "To understand that this supremely confident, self assured man could be slaughtered in broad daylight, his head blown off by some madman or by some sinister conspiracy; no one could be sure was to understand the fragility of life, the powerful forces lurking just under the surface of life. What our parents learned in a war, or in a struggle for survival, we learned that November. No one was safe; if not John Kennedy, then definitely not any of us." Dr. Joseph Adelson, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and co-author ol The Adolescent Experience, says that the assassination has had much more impact than he thought it would 20 years ago.

He realized then that it was a devastating event, he says, but he thought its importance would dwindle. "Instead," he says, "and I can't prove this, but it ran parallel to, and was followed by, the Vietnam War and the race rioting, and so it was part of those events that went along with the remarkable decline in confidence In all our institutions. Younger people, in particular, were more cynical after the assassination, said Adelson. "(It was) like after Lincoln's assassination; things just weren't the same afterward. McKinley's assassination didn't have that effect." Only now, Adelson says, is that confidence returning.

"Evert the confidence in the school systems, which reached a high point in early '60s, and then declined, is going to rise," he says. WHERE WERE YOU in '62?" asked the "American Graffiti" publicity slogan. Author Landon Y. Jones writes in "Great Expectations: America and The Baby Boom" that the slogan was carefully chosen to keep the action within the pre-assassination context. "It was precisely the quality of lost innocence that gave it (the movie) its charm," he writes.

Innocence and charm. They formed the orchestra as the Silent Generation waltzed through the '50s. The more sophisticated of the dancers laughed at Mort Sahl's acid political satire and agreed with Vance Packard that Americans (everybody except oneself) were a rather shallow lot. But almost everybody still believed in America. We had our own real-life "Uncle Sam" Eisenhower for a president, and later, our own clashing "Jack Armstrong" Kennedy.

The '508 people the Silent Generation, the Left-Out Generation were intimidated by Sputnik. We were alarmed to learn the Soviets had beat us at something that American schools had failed. Or, perhaps, as was said then, THEIR German scientists were smarter than OUR German scientists. Few of us figured the setback was permanent, or that it would be very long before we once again were on top where America SHOULD be. But as a whole, the '50s were so satisfying and so undisturbing that we let the decade last longer than ten years.

We let it last, in spirit, until Nov. 22, 1963. JOHN KENNEDY captured the admiration especially (t) (M) (044) (OdJ) (04J) (044) of the Baby Boom generation: the 75 million people born since 1946 who were the first generation in American history to have the power of numbers and education to fortify its youthful rebellion. The teen-agers liked his style, his looks, his charisma. Not that the young were that interested in politics then but they appreciated the sophistication he projected, and that dynamic image that made Americans proud.

Because most youth shared their parents' typically American optimism, they appreciated Kennedy's promise. That promise began with the inaugural address. Christopher Lasch, author of "Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations," says that, in many ways, the inaugural address was the most important event of the Kennedy administration, a high point from which everything else was a "The torch has been passed to a new generation tf Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." from John F. Kennedy's Inaugural address. "In these words," writes Lasch, "Kennedy invoked his preoccupation with discipline, testing and tempering on behalf of a whole generation's belief so soon shattered that it stood poised on the brink of greatness.

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