Except where otherwise noted everything that I am about to relate is remembered with astonishing clarity considering how very long ago it was: My first memory of that day was late morning. I was shaving. The radio was on. The announcer said there were protestors in Texas with signs that said it was time for the U. S. to have another ex-President. I agreed- the next Presidential election was a year away and I was a BIG Goldwater fan. It never occurred to me that they meant… I was a UConn student, a commuter. For some reason my only class was a 1:00 p.m. class that day (maybe I just blew off my morning classes, who knows). I probably left home shortly after noon for the 45 minute drive. For whatever reason I didn’t have the radio on. This was LONG before tape players, not to mention CDs. I was probably simply lost in thought on the drive to school and never bothered to turn the radio on. I parked in South campus and began the walk to my Intro. To Psych. class, which was in a large lecture hall with way more than 100 students. As I walked past faculty housing (South campus was way different then) there was a woman taking laundry off the line (most people did not yet have dryers), crying her eyes out. I remember being puzzled, then hypothesizing that her husband had left her or something. I thought he might have left a note which she had just discovered (Hey, I was young and frightfully innocent.). She was REALLY crying. As I continued the walk I ran into a classmate who I knew and was friendly with. He was African-American (RARE at UConn in those days) and his last name was Gamble. I don’t remember his first name. He said something like, “Terrible, isn’t it.” I had no idea what he was talking about, which my puzzled expression must have given away. He told me the President had been shot in Dallas. I was shocked, of course. There was no news as to his condition. This was probably at about 12:55. At the beginning of class the professor (a doc student) made a statement. He said words to the effect that we had no way of knowing what the president’s condition was (no cell phones, no live TV, no computers- at least no PCs, really no way to get instant news unless one plugged in a radio, which he did not do), and there was nothing we could do about it anyway, so the best thing to do was to simply go on with class. I’m sure no one paid attention to a thing he said during that unbelievably long hour. As I walked out of class the campus was deserted, except for students walking back to the dorm or to the parking lot, all of them clearly not knowing the President’s condition, and all hurrying to get news. I got to my car, turned on the radio, and learned that President Kennedy was dead. I didn’t know how to react, and I didn’t really react. It was simply too unbelievable to provoke a reaction. I went to pick up a friend who was going home for the weekend; I gave him a ride home almost every Friday. We said almost nothing on the way home, simply listened to the news. I distinctly remember that the big news was a search for a green station wagon (I think a Nash Rambler). It was believed to have four men in it and the four were wanted for questioning related to the assassination; the intimation was that they were suspects. This was repeated at least twice, and I believe more than that. And all accounts spoke of shots coming from more than one location. I remember hearing the expression “the grassy knoll” (It may have been “the grassy area to the northwest”). After I got home the memories are not as crystal clear, but during the course of the day and evening and the night (TV went off the air, at least in the boonies where I lived, from about 1:00-5:00 a.m.- all stations [I think we were able to watch three or maybe even four channels]). At some point during the late afternoon all talk shifted to Lee Oswald. The green station wagon was never mentioned again, nor was the grassy knoll. At some point late in the evening (probably after 10:00) Oswald was out in the hall under heavy guard; there were dozens of reporters and practically no security to rein them in or keep them within specific bounds. He proclaimed his innocence and said that his swollen eye had happened when he was hit by a policeman. He was being held, he said, for the shooting of a police officer. When asked whether he had killed Kennedy he looked very surprised and said that no one had mentioned that to him at all. He made a plea for an attorney to come forward to represent him (This was before “You have a right to a lawyer, if you cannot afford a lawyer…”). Like everyone else in the country I remained glued to the television throughout the weekend. The Dallas police officials, particularly Fritz and Curry, were obviously buffoons who were in WAY over their heads. That was completely clear every time they came on screen. I remember LBJ landing in D. C. and speaking briefly at the airport. He looked stunned and overwhelmed. I was reading the Sunday paper (special edition with lots of stuff on the life of Kennedy, the assassination, LBJ…). Most of the TV coverage was of the Kennedy family (Was the funeral held on Sunday? My memory says it was but that could be wrong.). In any case they cut to an announcer at the police station. He said that Oswald was on his way out, to be transferred to another location. I looked at the 21” black and white TV just in time to see Jack Ruby bolt into the picture and shoot Oswald. All hell broke loose. Oswald was taken to the same hospital as the President had gone to, and was treated in the same room. He died in that room shortly thereafter. There was lots more during that weekend and in the days, weeks and months to follow. Was there a conspiracy? Talk of one started almost immediately. There was certainly a conspiracy to withhold information from the public. For many, many years I firmly believed that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK and that Oswald did not act alone, if indeed he even fired any shots. There were so many oddities, so many questions about so many aspects of the case, so much about Oswald that simply did not ring true. Now I’m not so sure. I think it most likely that Oswald actually did it, and did it alone, but I doubt that there will ever be a definitive answer. The events of 11/22/1963 make up my most vivid memories of any public event in my lifetime. They hit me harder than did any other public event, and they have never left me. I suppose they equate to Pearl Harbor for the generation before mine, and to the events of 9/11/2001, to the generation that followed mine.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 08:49:48 +0000