A friend writes:
When you undergo a traumatic experience, especially at a young age, you remember details of that experience for the rest of your life.
And so it was for so many on the day of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on that fateful Friday – November 22, 1963.
I was an eighth grader at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania.
The day before, we had discussed in our current events club about how JFK and David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s recently resigned prime minister, had a vociferous argument over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, just six weeks after JFK pushed through the nuclear test ban treaty – for the entire world to sign.
JFK didn’t want Israel – or anyone else- to produce nuclear weapons.
Ben-Gurion shot back that Israel’s adversaries wanted genocide – that this was the lesson that the Jews had learned from the Nazis, that this was why the Jews needed nukes (the dialogue is well documented in Avner Cohen’s book Israel And The Bomb, Columbia University Press, 1998
As I walked out of school to catch the bus home that Friday afternoon, a seventh grader down the steps, yelling out the news that the president had been shot dead in Dallas.
First thoughts hit me were that JFK was such a young guy, like a nice uncle who always had new ideas. My mind was racing, and I quickly wrote down my thoughts when I got on the bus to go home.
How would we remember JFK? I remembered listening to him in sixth grade at his inauguration – “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He had one message: to get involved. Join the Peace Corps. Fight for civil rights. Help Poor Nations Abroad, and act in accordance with “Profiles in Courage”: Be proud to stand for the principles of your country, no matter what.
Getting on the bus at City Line Avenue, people of all ages were sobbing. A black man getting on the bus said to the driver, “Do you know what he did for us?”
The editor of the school paper, known as the Gateway, was also on that bus.
I told her that my dad was commuting these days to Washington DC, as an engineer working on central air conditioning at the big post office in DC. Saying that I could join him there, I asked if I could cover the JFK funeral for the school paper. She said “sure” and I got my first press assignment..
My thoughts on the bus which I wrote down at the time were that we “must do something to help our country” to remember our fallen president. As I sauntered down the sidewalk on Malvern Avenue in Overbrook Park, my Mom was standing outside, her hands folded. She asked me what I thought. My eight-year-old brother, Neal, standing beside her, shrugged his shoulders and said that “hey, we have an old man again,” meaning Lyndon Johnson.
And there was The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin delivered on our door step an hour before, spread out on the couch, with the headline “Kennedy shot in Dallas street,” superimposed over the sub headline: “Nixon, in Dallas, says that Kennedy will drop Johnson in 1964.”
Sitting in the living room for hours, we watched a shaken Walter Cronkite describe everything that he could about JFK and then about the ex-marine Lee Harvey Oswald. The weekly satire show “That Was The Week That Was”, hosted by David Frost, led with a melody that was written on the spot by the usually hilarious staff, now somber and serious. Nancy Ames sang the lyrics, which you can now pick up on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h56_IbHqTIo
“A young man rode with his head held high, under the Texas sun, And no one guessed, That a man so blessed, would perish by the gun, Lord, would perish by the gun. A shot rang out like a southern shout. And Heaven held its breath. For a man shot down, In a Southern town, In the summer of his years, Yes, the summer of his years”.
As I psyched myself up that Sunday to cover the funeral the following day in Washington – where my friend Gary and I would accompany my dad at what was then called Pennsylvania Railroad Station at 30th Street – I was glued to the TV screen, to learn anything and everything that could be learned about the assassination and the assassin.
Clips from JFK’s short life were flashed across the screen – his press conferences, his defiant declaration of freedom at the Berlin Wall and his rollicking about with Caroline and John John.
Cronkite then showed a film of Oswald giving out fliers for the “Fair Play For Cuba Committee” in New Orleans.
And here was my first inquisitive wonder: How did CBS get that footage of Oswald so quickly? In an era before our advanced age of communications and internet, how was this possible that they got such a film? Did that mean that the FBI knew who Oswald was, I asked my Mom.
And then a moment on live TV occurred that may never happen again: The news cut to the basement of the Dallas police station, where Oswald was being arraigned and we watched Oswald’s assassination on live television. What an unbelievable moment in US television history.
The next morning in DC, we took the train from Philly to DC, and walked from Union Station to the Washington Post Office. We saw world leaders walk out of the White House, where they paid their respects to the late president. I stood in awe as we identified Charles de Gaulle of France, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Golda Meir of Israel, Willy Brandt of West Germany, Olof Palme of Sweden and Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia as they walked in a solemn procession by us. All walked slowly, somberly, seemingly without any protection whatsoever. And a Scottish band played a solemn version of “Hail to the Chief,” a quiet crowd looked on.
Yes, this was a memorial to JFK, yet it was also a salute to America 18 years after World War II, after US had played a pivotal role in saving the world from the Nazi and fascist threat. The procession was also a thank-you to America for its stand in the Cold War, which 13 months earlier had almost boiled over.
The US secret service took no chances with American public officials. They all drove in vans, with guards on each side. We got a glimpse of President Johnson as he drove by, and my father took a snapshot of the car. The policeman standing in front of us went to pieces when the casket of JFK went by, with the lonely unmounted horse leading the way. This was the first time that I had ever seen a grown man cry, let alone a cop.
After everyone went by, my dad went to work at the post office, and Gary and I strolled through the crowd back to Union Station.
On the Pennsylvania Railroad, an older lady (she might have been 40, but I remember her as “old”) asked us what we thought of the recent assassinations. My response was that while I thought that killing Huey Long was a good idea, but that killing JFK was a bad idea.
I then started asking questions of my own. Five or six people got into the conversation, and no one had answers to my simple questions, like, “How could it be that a Marine runs away to Russia in the middle of the Cold War, gets married, comes back, is not arrested, works for Cuba, kills the president and then gets killed two days later at the police station, no less ?” And “what was Nixon doing in Dallas on the day of the assassination?”
I kept asking these run-on questions, and America will keep asking that run-on question until all official documents of the JFK assassination are released.
Over the years, we had understood that the JFK secret documents would be released after fifty years. I guess that this is not going to happen.
EPILOGUE
No essay about our baby boomer generation collective loss of JFK would not be complete without recalling folk songs that we would sing about our departed President, who had instilled us, as children, with hope for a better world.
Here are two of those songs, by folk singer Phil Ochs.
Ochs wrote the first song in memory of murdered civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, and adapted it to recall the JFK murder. Ochs wrote the second song right after the assassination. I heard Phil Ochs perform these songs at a Philadelphia coffee house one year after JFK’s murder, and I have internalized the message of these songs ever since.
TOO MANY MARTYRS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkfgJG5kyQg
Too Many Martyrs and Too Many DeadToo Many lives too Many Empty Words Were SaidToo many times for too many angry menOh may it never be again.
=============
THAT WAS THE PRESIDENT, AND THAT WAS A MANhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSQRuNmP7SU
The bullets of the false revenge have struck us once againAs the angry seas have struck upon the sandAnd it seemed as though a friendless world had lost itself a friendThat was the President and that was the man.
I still can see him smiling there and waving at the crowdAs he drove through the music of the bandAnd never even knowing no more time would be allowedNot for the President and not for the man.
Here’s a memory to share, here’s a memory to saveOf the sudden early ending of commandYet a part of you and a part of me is buried in his graveThat was the President and that was the man.
It’s not only for the leader that the sorrow hits so hardThere are greater things I’ll never understandHow a man so filled with life, even death was caught off guard.That was the President and that was the man.
Every thing he might have done and all he could have beenWas proven by the troubled traitor's handFor what other death could wound the hearts of so many menThat was the President and that was the man.
Yes, the glory that was Lincoln’s never died when he was slainIt’s been carried over time and time againAnd to the list of honor you may add another nameThat was the President and that was the man.That was the President and that was the man.
**
My comment: I don't think any assasination is a good idea. And I am sorry that my friend didn't make it clear that he agrees with that sentiment as well. But a defensive war is different. Long was not waging war.
We know a lot more about that day now, but in any case it was a terrible day in Dallas.
Thanks David.
I was ten years old on November 22 1963, and I remember it as if it was yesterday, and that's no idle cliche' on my part. Those of you who were around at the time know exactly what I mean.
And I remember thinking how angry the drums sounded on the day of the funeral.
7th grade, Tamanend Jr. Hi, Warrington, PA. Many years later married at Overbrook Presby. My wife's best friend lived in Overbrook Park, father was the Airport director.
I, too, was in junior high - English class to be exact. We were release early, as were most school kids. The walk home was surreal. Getting out of school early was cool, the reason why was not.
It seems like every generation has it's moment. For my mother's generation it was Pearl Harbor. My kids will likely remember the Challenger disaster and/or 9/11.
Who knows what's next...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Thanks Dave. You have a great way of telling the story. I would suspect that you received a good grade on your report. Yes, I think all of know where we were that fateful day. I was working in an electric utility 138,000 volt substation preparing to run some tests with the telephone company to verify that the telco phone circuits would operate during a high current fault on the transmission system. Four thousand amps into the ground can make copper pellets of a 24 gauge telephone wire unless there is protection for that possibility. Someone came up the driveway and shouted that the president had been shot. Everyone looked stunned and I dove for the operators radio to learn what the news was. It was not long before orders came down to secure everything to its normal state. The telco employes were hardening all their facilities. No one new what might be coming next.
But the earth still revolved and fortunately life continues. Thanks for the memory.
It is an anonomous friend's memory, not mine. A friend who also moved to Israel.
But I can inform you of my memory. I was working at a Baptist church somewhere in Virginia, N. or S. Carolina. It may have been the River Road Baptist Church in Richmond, VA. The head of the Building Committee provided dinner or supper for me at his home before driving me to the railroad station to board a sleeper to NY. His wife informed both of us when we arrived at his home from the church. We were still on the porch, had not yet entered the house. On hearing the news, all my strength drained from me, and I sat immediately on a swing sofa on the porch. My host said that I was taking the news harder than he was. Thinking about some of the emnity that at the time existed between some Baptists and some Catholics, I did not comment further, but we did eat in silence, since I had already discussed my preliminary acoustical evaluation and more detailed discussion would need to await analysis of the recorded data. Thank the Eternal that the emnity has dissapeared nearly comnpletely.
I was 7 on that day, in elementary school in a suburban cleveland. I remember that day as clear as a bell. We were sent home, the walk home as surreal as the rest if the day would become. The day mark the beginning of a trio of violent shooting that would leave JFK, his brother and MLK dead.
The sixites was a decade of so many good things, but defined by violence, protests and change.
Thanks for your rememberence of that tragic day David, you told it well.
Rest in peace JFK, and your brothers who fell after you.
I was a senior in high school, in the language lab when the announcement was made by the principal that the President had been shot in Dallas. Since our school was overcrowded and it was my last class, I left with a friend (who had a car) and drove home and turned on the TV. A cold, dreary day in Chicago. A real turning point for my baby boomer generation.
I was in class, 7th grade, Catholic school in Gulfport, Mississippi. The news came via the principal on the intercom.
Some of my classmates applauded and exclaimed, "They got the n!gg*r-lover." I wish I were making this up. Although to actually hear them was shocking, at the same time it wasn't very surprising. Such was Mississippi at that time.
On the other hand, JFK was revered in our household. And if one of my parents ever heard me or my sibs use the N-word, we were in deep s#!t. Once, much younger, I had mimicked what I'd heard at school, and I don't remember if I got spanked or just confined to my room, but I never made that mistake again.
There was a decade or so when I was convinced that JFK was killed by a right-domestic conspiracy. I probably read twenty-five books on the conspiracy side. I was CONVINCED. Then I read all 1400 pages of Vincent Bugliosi's anti-conspiracy book. That book is an amazing accomplishment, written over ten years or something, and ruthlessly, exhaustively researched. I did a 180 on the subject. It doesn't make as good a story, but LHO was apparently indeed a lone nut.
The thing that had most made me think it was a conspiracy was that LHO was immediately murdered, and in the basement of the police station, no less! But apparently Jack Ruby, although not a loner, was another brand of nut. Not a nut really, but an extremely emotional character who desperately wanted to "be somebody."
If you are interested in this, I highly recommend the Bugliosi book.
I lived in Gulfport then, but we had moved there from Dallas.
In those days Secret Service procedures were pretty slipshod compared to now. People were allowed to be in windows of buildings all along the parade route. Crazy.
I don't idolize JFK as some do, but still, he was a great man. That was a terrible, terrible day. I will never forget where I was then, or for the Challenger disaster, or 9/11.
L-O, I've heard all the conspiracy theorys over the years, right-wing, left-wing, CIA, FBI, Mafia, you name it, some that sounded plausable, some that were just plain nuts.
We don't hear too much about them anymore, I suppose it's because of the "Boomer" generation aging and the generations that came after us look on the Kennedy years as ancient history.
I think that what kept the conspiracy theorys going for all those years was the inability of many people to accept that a young, dynamic, charismatic president was done in by a common, everyday punk. And that's all Oswald was, a punk.
He certainly didn't change anything for the better. It seems like the 60's were all downhill after that.
Yes, the books I read covered all brands of conspiracy. Some of the books were real junk, but several were very convincing. And really, really fascinating.
But VB's book trumps them all. He refutes all the conspiracy theories, step by painstaking step. He was a California prosecutor, and he wrote the book Helter Skelter, about the Manson murders.
Flintlock76He certainly didn't change anything for the better. It seems like the 60's were all downhill after that.
There are those who feel that, had he not been martyred, JFK's presidency would have been lackluster, at best.
But, we'll never know. I was too young to form such an opinion at the time.
As a counterpoint to Bugliosi, try reading Lamar Waldron's meticulously researched and footnoted tome.
The sixties had some high points, the moon landing brought the nation and the world together. Well accept those conspiracy theoriest as well. I watched the space program Thur out the sixties.
charlie hebdo As a counterpoint to Bugliosi, try reading Lamar Waldron's meticulously researched and footnoted tome.
The bridge in front of the JFK motorcade (the infamous "grassy knoll" was next to it) was the SP railroad's "Triple Overpass":
https://bridgehunter.com/tx/dallas/bh58240/
From the "Description" on that webpage:
This bridge is "Debatably the most famous roadway feature in America" according to the 1993 NRHP application for Dealey Plaza. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while his motorcade was approaching this underpass on Elm Street. His motorcade then sped through the underpass en route to the hospital.
This handsome art-deco structure was built with particular civic pride in the Texas centennial year of 1936. Other than realignment of the RR tracks on its deck, it is unchanged since construction.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This webpage appears to claim that a railroad worker and a railroad detective were on the bridge at the time of the assassination:
https://jfkfacts.org/eyewitness-in-dealey-plaza/
(Note: I express no opinion on the validity of these assertions, or on the various conspiracy theories surrounding this event.)
- PDN.
Lithonia Operator charlie hebdo As a counterpoint to Bugliosi, try reading Lamar Waldron's meticulously researched and footnoted tome. Thanks. I might do that, as I find it all so fascinating. The only problem is that I might get sucked back in! It was kind of an addiction there for a while. It was SO hard to not believe there were dark things going on out of sight. And there were for sure, LOTS of odd coincidences ... But I have not read Waldron's book, despite seeing many references to it. CH, have you read the Bugliosi book? It's a great read. But the damn thing is so heavy, I read it all lying down, with it propped up on a pillow on my stomach! I know of one guy who read the whole thing standing up, with it propped up on a counter, like a library dictionary. If you drop this book on your foot, you will get injured. I think as an introduction to the conspiracy side, it's hard to beat Jim Marr's Crossfire. I couldn't put it down.
I slightly knew Lamar. I started Bugliosi, but found it tedious and too much of a hit job on any information that didn't correspond with the Warren Report. The Senate and House committees in the 70s both agreed that there were a lot of flaws and gaps in the quickly researched Warren Report, largely put together by Allen Dulles.
I do agree that there were some flaws in the Warren Report, and I know that Dulles was the primary author, but nonetheless I found the bulk of VB's book very convincing.
Is the Waldron book a good read? Some of the books I've read were not. And some were total junk in every way.
The well-known anti-conspiracy book Case Closed has some serious flaws, IMO.
Death of a President by William Manchester is worth reading too. My brother and I were on our way to our cub scouts meeting that Friday. I was eight, he was ten. We left school and walked through downtown Amityville where all the cars were stopped on the streets. A church ball rang slowly. It reminded me of "The Twilight Zone." A woman came out of the bank crying.
We didn't know what was going on. We got to the meeting place, the lady there was crying and waved us away so we went home. Our mother was crying in the kitchen, listening to the radio and she told us the news. As far as I'm concerned, everything that happened since then was not supposed to happen thanks to that worthless punk.
But, in the folowing spring when the Beatles came to the USA, I think that was the thing that finally took people's minds off Dallas.
tree68 Flintlock76 He certainly didn't change anything for the better. It seems like the 60's were all downhill after that. There are those who feel that, had he not been martyred, JFK's presidency would have been lackluster, at best. But, we'll never know. I was too young to form such an opinion at the time.
Flintlock76 He certainly didn't change anything for the better. It seems like the 60's were all downhill after that.
I think one thing's for certain, we wouldn't have had the Vietnam fiasco.
I remember reading that when the situation in Vietnam was heating up President Kennedy was considering deploying the Third Marine Division to 'Nam, this was sometime in 1962.
Since General MacArthur was still alive Kennedy went to see him and ask his advice as he had a lot of respect and admiration for the old man. MacArthur told him "DON'T get involved in an Asian land war! If you do, you need your head examined!" Advisors and trainers were all right, but in MacArthurs opinion that was as far as the US should go. So the plans to send the Marines were quietly dropped.
I do remember seeing (years later) a Walter Cronkite interview with Kennedy where the subject of Vietnam came up. Kennedy said he had no plans to send troops because "It's their (The South Vietnamese governments) war, they have to fight it. We can't fight it for them."
So, there it is.
Waldron is long and well-documented, unlike most books on the murder. But it is not an easy read. More scholarly.
Flintlock76 tree68 Flintlock76 He certainly didn't change anything for the better. It seems like the 60's were all downhill after that. There are those who feel that, had he not been martyred, JFK's presidency would have been lackluster, at best. But, we'll never know. I was too young to form such an opinion at the time. I think one thing's for certain, we wouldn't have had the Vietnam fiasco. I remember reading that when the situation in Vietnam was heating up President Kennedy was considering deploying the Third Marine Division to 'Nam, this was sometime in 1962. Since General MacArthur was still alive Kennedy went to see him and ask his advice as he had a lot of respect and admiration for the old man. MacArthur told him "DON'T get involved in an Asian land war! If you do, you need your head examined!" Advisors and trainers were all right, but in MacArthurs opinion that was as far as the US should go. So the plans to send the Marines were quietly dropped. I do remember seeing (years later) a Walter Cronkite interview with Kennedy where the subject of Vietnam came up. Kennedy said he had no plans to send troops because "It's their (The South Vietnamese governments) war, they have to fight it. We can't fight it for them." So, there it is.
I realize that I'm the one who took the thread down this dark path. If Dave or others feel this is distasteful, I will cease and desist.
Lithonia Operator I realize that I'm the one who took the thread down this dark path. If Dave or others feel this is distasteful, I will cease and desist.
No, not at all. When old-timers like us ( Like US? WHAT? ) get together sooner or later the JFK assassination subject will come up, and I for one like hearing everyones memories of the same. "Where were you when..."
It's exactly like our parents memories of where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, or people who were kids in the year 2001 will have memories of where they were when they heard about the 9/11 attacks.
There's none around to ask, but I have to wonder if the folks living in 1861 could tell you where they were when they heard about Fort Sumter. Down at the depot where the Western Union office was, at Smiths General Store, at the livery stable, in a little red schoolhouse? The list could go on and on.
By the way, have any of you been to "The Sixth Floor Museum" in the Dallas Book Depository? I have, and it's very well done and worth seeing.
You can't stand exactly where Oswald set up his "hidey-hole" but you can get very close to it. It's an education. An easy shot from the window to the street. A trained marksman like Oswald would have had no trouble hitting his target from where he was. As a matter of fact I could take anyone to a rifle range and in a matter of an hour or two have that person capable of making the shots Oswald did. It was a piece of cake for that punk.
There are many experts who would dispute your/Warren's theory.
I was sitting on the agent's table in the station in my then home town when I heard of Persident Kennedy's death. And, I had just reached the home where I was going to eat Sunday dinner when I heard of his presumed murderer's death.
I do not recall the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been attacked (I was in the first grade), but I well remember being told, a few days later, by onr of my brothers--"Johnny, you will not be able to put as much sugar on your cereal."
Johnny
I was on a local freight delivering cars to the Uniroyal factory in Naugatuck CT.
I started this thread with my fellow American-Israeli friend's recalling his receiving the news of Kennedy's death and later added my own recollection. Regarding Pearl Harbor, I was 9 going on 10. For me the war had already begun when I was knocked down and almost killed on the NW corner of West 88th and Central Park West in October or November 1940, age 8+, rescued by older boys from my school. On December 7th, 1941, my sister Lillian took me to the Museum of Natural History at 81st and CPW including seeing the movie My Friend Flicker, about a collee dog and his relation to a boy. My sister's husband, Danny, an Army Air Force Doctor, was at our home on West 85th Street. When Lillian and I got home, Dan told us about the attack and said he and Lillian had to pack and leave immediately so he could return to active duty at the Army Air Force based at Richmond, VA. My Dad already had begun serving as a Draft Board Medical Examiner, as he had also done in WWI.
Dave, I knew you started the thread, but you did not get into the conspiracy stuff. I began that, then worried if some, including you, might not appreciate that.
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