REMEMBERING THE DAY JFK DIED... Its funny that after 51 years, Lonnie and I still think of President Kennedy being killed on 23 November. Thats because we were both based on Shu Lin Kou Air Station in Taiwan, and the date there was 23 November 1963. I was working the midnight shift in the Air Force voice-intercept section and we got the word about 0300: The President had been shot in Dallas. It was sometime later that we were advised he was dead. We were devastated. No one knew what was going on behind the scenes. We were monitoring the Chinese closely. There were suspicions the Soviets were involved in the assassination. I got off duty about 0600 and went straight to Lonnies barracks in the 76th SOU. The Army had its own area of the base. I believe it was his day off. He was still asleep and I woke him to tell him President Kennedy had been killed. The mood all over base was one of stunned silence. We were placed on full military alert and confined to the air station for about ten days. Lonnie remembers when we were finally allowed to go down town - the twenty miles to Taipei - the Chinese were still in shock. There was none of the usual hustling from the pedicab boys or the store owners. They simply walked up to us and told us how sorry they were. I remember one of the Chinese newspapers had a headline which read: The American Dream Has Been Killed! I rotated back to the States on 19 December, and we flew home over the polar route. We landed in Anchorage, Alaska, to refuel, and had a couple of hours layover. When I stepped off the plane, my first time on U.S. soil after almost a year and a half in the Southeast Pacific, the first thing I saw were the American flags at half staff, and piles of snow everywhere. I talked to Lonnie this morning, and we were just remembering... 51 years ago today. ~ Gary B. Blackburn Copyright © 2014 Lonnie M. Long and Gary B. Blackburn
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 15:50:39 +0000
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