I knew something was up when the nun from the other classroom rushed into ours and whispered excitedly into our nun’s ear. They both became distraught and wheeled out the television set on a metal cart. Watching tv? That had never happened before at Assumption School. But John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, had just been shot in Dallas, Texas. It was November 22, 1963, just six days before Thanksgiving.
I learned a lot that day and weekend about presidents, motorcades, and death. Kennedy’s death was soon followed by that of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit and the alleged assassin of both men, Lee Harvey Oswald. My grandmother alerted us to Oswald’s death, since she had witnessed it on live tv that Sunday morning. Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald at point-blank range in the basement of Dallas police headquarters.
To my seven-year-old mind, these events seemed highly ritualized around death, blood, and sacrifice, but the most amazing thing to me was that the entire adult world came to a standstill, paralyzed. Death held that kind of power over everyday existence. On the 60th anniversary of the Dallas assassination, may we never experience anything like that again.
Image credit: feature by Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7464584. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
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I remember everything about that weekend 60 years ago. I was in high school waiting for the last class period to start, when a student came into the room and said Kennedy had been shot. I didn’t believe it.
Then the teacher arrived, asking us to say a prayer for the President. Shortly after, they hooked up the intercom to a radio broadcast. The first words I heard were from NBC’s Frank Magee saying “thirty minutes before the announcement of the President’s death…” at which time I stopped listening, in shock.
School was dismissed and I rode the bus home. I had a trench coat on, and walked into the lower level rec room where we had a color TV. I sat down to watch, probably about 3:30 PM. At 7:00 PM I suddenly realized that I still had my rain coat on. I hadn’t moved a muscle, transfixed.
The next morning I woke up to a steady rain, thought it had been a dream, then slowly realized it was all too real – as was Ruby shooting Oswald on Sunday morning, as I watched live.
My father cried on Monday when little “]ohn-John” saluted his coffin – one of the few times I ever saw him cry.
Although this country had been through two world wars, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other challenges, this was different – it was one person pulling a trigger and ending a President’s life in the most gruesome way.
I think society changed that day, in a very fundamental way, much for the worse.
Thank you for the touching recollection, Vic. I think you share what many of us who remember that day experienced. Yes, society changed that day as did our government. But I think the ex Marine with security clearance and a CIA case file who defected to the USSR and then back again wasn’t some lone nut. Wait…you had a color tv in 1963…?