National Geographic Channel recently aired the first of several documentaries and movies about November 22, 1963. I’d like to say that date seems like yesterday, but in actuality it seems like long ago. At the time I was seventeen, a junior in high school, on the way to a debate tournament at Bradley University. We heard of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s death on the car radio.
As I watched those documentaries today, I thought about how ill prepared we were for such a tragedy. And now we have lived through so many more in the
intervening fifty years. I also considered how much life has changed all around us, but those images have stayed frozen in time in our heads and in our hearts. Watching the horrified faces and tears of people outside Parkland Hospital in Dallas brings back the same feeling of grief and dread, even after fifty years.
The black and white footage shows immense changes
in media coverage. Without the technology we have today, information was sparse and often inaccurate. The President was reported to be receiving blood transfusions and his eventual death was actually disclosed by one of the priests who gave him last rites. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was reported to have had either a heart attack or been shot also. Neither report was true. Long after Lee Harvey Oswald (often called “Lee Harold Oswald” by reporters), left the Texas Book Depository, the Secret Service was still looking for him in the building because he was reportedly still there.
Besides so many inaccuracies, the way the 1963 news media operated is also startling from a 21st century perspective. The local Dallas news station shows reporters on camera smoking cigarette after cigarette and interviewing people while holding telephones to their ears–often both ears. No unseen ear phones here. The news anchor actually explained that they would have an update on Texas Governor Connolly’s condition the following morning since the news went off the air at night. [Why, oh why, did they have to invent the 24-hour news cycle?]
The news footage told me things I didn’t know. I thought that people leaving massive flowers in someone’s memory was a phenomenon of more recent times like Princess Di’s funeral. But many people left memorials for Kennedy outside Parkland Hospital and at the location where he was shot.
I also learned that a casket was brought to the hospital to transport the body, and the funeral home’s employee reported that the First Lady took off her wedding ring and put it on the President’s finger before they closed the casket. During these early hours no one knew where Lyndon Johnson was. He had been whisked away to “an unknown location” to keep him safe and he would soon be sworn in. It was ironic to hear Mrs. Rose Kennedy talking on the phone to LBJ on Air Force One and telling him how much she knew he loved her son. In the intervening years the truth of the Kennedys/Johnson relationship would say otherwise.
Finally, I didn’t realize that Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral was held in secrecy in Fort Worth with only the family attending. News men acted as pall bearers since there was no one else. It was not open to the public.
Even now, after fifty years, the images persist. It was mayhem when Kennedy was shot and his car left the motorcade and rushed him to the hospital. We have watched the home video of that scene over and over. Also seen and remembered is the footage of people waiting outside Parkland Hospital for word of the President’s condition, tears streaming down their
shocked faces.
Even the Secret Service men were in tears, as was the judge, Sarah Hughes, while she performed the oath of office to LBJ on Air Force One. I saw the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby live since the television station covered it as he was transported to Dallas County Jail. I remember my total disbelief as I rose from a chair in our family room.
That same day we learned a new vocabulary of state funerals: the rider-less, black-draped horse with the
boots on backwards; the casket lying in state in the Capitol rotunda; the mournful notes of the funeral dirge; Mrs. Kennedy in black with her young children, and,of course, John’s salute; and the internment at Arlington Cemetery near the Eternal Flame. So many of the participants that day are now gone too.
I’m not sure my children or grandchildren will ever understand the shared grief of my generation over what we lost that day. Oh, I know we’re baby boomers and prone to re-examining and whining over the memories of our lost youth. But on November 22, we shared the total disbelief that this could happen in our country to a young, vibrant, and handsome president, leaving behind a grieving widow and two small children. We shared the loss of innocence from those three shots fired that day. We shared the loss of what might have been.
And we will always share the images of that dark procession down Pennsylvania Avenue when the world and its leaders came to Washington, D.C., and shared our loss too.
I still never think of that day without tearing up. People of a younger generation can’t begin to understand the feeling of excitement and promise generated by this young, vibrant president and his wife and the way the world completely changed after his death. On the day he was killed, I was at the University of Texas, working in a small library, planning with friends to go and see President Kennedy the next day when he came to Austin. Kennedy was not universally loved. Like so many Texans today, there were many Texans who spoke disparagingly of the president. So when a man came into the library and told me blandly, and with a little laugh, that the President had been shot, I jumped up from my chair and told him that was a terrible joke. Still smiling, he said, no it’s true. I went into the corridor and found people staring at a TV that was usually ignored. From Walter Cronkite I heard the terrible news of the shooting. It was a while before we learned he had died.
I went back into the library and instead of making a general announcement, I went from person to person and told them. It seemed like news that was too horrible to tell out loud. For the next three days I cried almost non-stop. The funeral was devastating to watch. The following year, I worked for a university law professor who took on the Jack Ruby case for a year. Surreal.
You are so right, Terry, when you say “surreal.” How amazing that you were touched by that whole tragic event twice. You were so wise to tell everyone in person instead of making an announcement. I think many of us cried for three days. And, like you, I still tear up when I watch the various shows that are discussing this on television. It even touched the generation before us since Kennedy was from that generation.
Today we look back on the assassination and I believe most people understand that Oswald didn’t really represent Texas or even Dallas. What a sad, sad, thing that such an attention-seeking loner could do so much damage and change the course of history.
You captured how it was. I spent hours in front of the TV while still trying to do my chores. A mom of 5 kids–I had lots to do, but managed to see most of what was going on. My kids were told what happened in school and came home devastated.
You are one strong woman, Marilyn. I cannot even imagine having to talk with children about that horrific event. And you’re right about the television being constantly on and having the pull of a magnet. It was like watching a train wreck and you couldn’t look away.