2nd Historical Riff of the Week: Friday, November 22, 1963. On that Friday morning, I went to work at Penn, preparing for the opening night of the first play I ever directed, Eugene ONeills The Great God Brown. (Dear God, what were we thinking!). I was walking to the door of Irvine Auditorium to send out for hair spray when two students walked in and said the President and First Lady had been shot. I thought, at first, that this was some kind of sick joke, but, I was standing outside of Bruce Montgomerys open door--Penn friends will know these locations--and, on the radio, people were running up the grassy knoll. This news bulletin preceded the announcement of the Presidents death by, maybe, a half hour. I went to Houston Hall for coffee, not grasping how serious this was. A group of students were gathered around a radio. As I passed, they all walked away, silently. Silence was noticeable that day as everything came to a complete stop. That night, NBC signed off with David Brinkley saying that all this horror had been caused by a punk kid with a mail-order rifle, a phrase Ive never forgotten. Has the country ever been the same since? I dont think so. Thanks for letting me share these memories.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:11:13 +0000
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