There are certain days that you remember exactly where you were. September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks—the door of the school library at the Christian school where I taught. Earthquake during the 1989 World Series—my rented house in Charleston, Mississippi, where I had just returned from a junior high football game. Collapse of the space shuttle in 1986—my apartment in Hattiesburg, where I just returned from a morning class at the University of Southern Mississippi.

All of those are important dates in American history. November 23, 1984, was not such a date. Nevertheless, I remember where I was that day and why I was there. I recall the urgency of the morning and the steadfastness of my...

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