Where were you that day when our world changed forever, 50 years ago today? What were you doing when you first heard that our young, glamorous President John F. Kennedy had left us, suddenly and tragically, the victim of an assassin’s bullet?
There are days that earlier generations told us they always remembered. Dec. 7, 1941, is probably the most notable. Everyone of the generation before ours remembered where they were when they learned that the Japanese warplanes had dropped death and destruction on our forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And I’m sure there were other days that everyone tended to remember, too; milestones in their lives, that affected everyone.
Funny how when your life is spent writing, putting black on white for others to read, you tend to have a very retentive memory for particular details. It’s part of being that personality type. If you can retain significant memories, they are good fodder for future writings.
I can remember where I was and how I learned that the Korean War had started (yes, I was very young; I haven’t always been “Old” Corporal!) Mom said to Dad, over supper, “Well, I guess we’re in another war.” It scared me. When I woke up from a nap before supper at my parents’ home in 1962, I can remember hearing a female voice on the radio — a recording, as I found out later — and then an announcer coming on, live, and saying, “And that was Marilyn Monroe.” The blonde bombshell had died at her home, supposedly of a drug overdose.
When Elvis’s death was announced, when President Ronald Reagan was shot, I was in a “five and dime” store each time, and heard the news on radios which happened to be on.
But of course the sudden death of a U.S. president by foul play trumps all that. It’s happened four times in our history. And many, many of us were alive the fourth time, and remember it vividly, with the horror and loss coming back whenever we see a photo, or the Zapruder film, from that parade in Dealey Plaza.
I was a private soldier in the U.S. Army on Nov. 22, 1963, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, the home of the 1st Infantry Division — the “Big Red One.” My job description? Public information officer — a glorified name for “Army P.R. man.”
That week was a busy one for the Public Information Office. Some bigshots from 5th Army Headquarters in Chicago were visiting the post, going around to various locations in the field to see what the Big Red One was doing. Of course, various elaborate exercises, military style, were arranged to impress said top brass, and each of us reporters were assigned to a different “field” location, with a photographer from the post photo lab in tow, to get details and pictures of the infantry, artillery and armor doing their stuff.
My assignment? The 106-mm recoilless rifle range. For those who have never served in the military, the recoilless rifle is NOT a rifle; it’s a piece of artillery that is mounted on a jeep. The barrel extends over the windshield, and is fired there, with an ear-splitting CRACK! that left me with tinnitus which persists to this day.
We were out there all day Thursday (the nearest mess hall sent out a mobile crew with a food wagon to bring us noon chow), and until noon Friday. After our second, and last, meal at the recoilless rifle range, we all got on an Army troop truck to ride back to Main Post and Post Headquarters. That’s where the PIO office was located. I remember one older GI riding in the bed of the truck who must have known the driver, because he kept yelling genial insults at him through the back window of the cab.
I got off the truck in front of headquarters, went inside and upstairs to the office. When I walked in, I was surprised to find no one at their desks, typing up stories about the last two days. Everyone was standing around, and there was a radio on one of the desks. It was turned on, and someone was talking in a strained, shocked voice.
“What’s going on, Mark?” I said to Mark Endsley, my civilian supervisor, who was standing nearest the door.
Endsley, a short, loud, crude-talking western Kansan, blurted, “Somebody shot the president down in Dallas!”
It didn’t register in my brain for a few seconds. Then I said, “Oh, come on, Mark! Don’t joke about something like that!”
“I’m not jokin’! They DID shoot him!” he exploded. A couple of the others in the room caught my eye and nodded. It was true. No joke. Oh my God …
We stood there. Numb. Listening. Then came Walter Cronkite’s announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States is dead.” It was expected, given the tenor of the news we’d heard for the last 15 minutes; but it still shook all of us.
One sergeant, Vince Naylor, laughing nervously and obviously talking to keep from crying, said loudly, “Well, when they find out who did this, there’ll be hell to pay!”
Word came down shortly from the commanding general’s office at Fort Riley: All personnel at headquarters may return to quarters for the rest of the day. We trailed out, still stunned, murmuring to each other about what this might mean: Was it a conspiracy? Would we go to war? How will this affect our lives in the Army?
Arriving back at the barracks, first platoon, I walked in and looked around. Only two other GIs in there; two black guys, sitting astraddle of one’s bunk, playing cards. I looked over and called, “Hey, did you guys hear about the president?” They didn’t even look up from their card game; one said, in a “Who cares?” tone of voice, “Yeah, he got his ass shot.”
I was stunned again. I kept silent, but I was thinking, “You no-account, smart-mouthed bastard!”
That evening a bunch of us gathered at the Service Club, which had a TV set (no television in the barracks in 1963), and watched the continuing coverage of the tragedy. We heard a name, which I distinctly remember being given as “Leo Harvey Oswald.” Later they corrected his first name to “Lee.” We heard how Lyndon B. Johnson, the vice president, already had taken the oath of office as president. How hundreds of officials and notables from across the country and the world were issuing shocked, grieving comments on President Kennedy’s death at the hands of a skinny, Communist 24-year-old shooting from a book depository.
Our platoon sergeant told us that night: “Right after breakfast Saturday morning, we all WILL form up in platoons on the post parade ground to be officially informed by the commanding general of the president’s death.”
That meant all the GIs on post. Khaki uniforms, overcoats, and the caps that looked like the ones policemen wore in those days. We were there, 15,000 strong, to hear the sad news that was now news to nobody among us.
The next day, Sunday, I believe I was again watching TV at the service club when Dallas police brought Lee Harvey Oswald through that basement for his arraignment. A guy in a businessman’s hat and suit lunged through the crowd and shot Oswald in the stomach. Minutes later, he was dead. And with him died the real story of just exactly how the assassination had been hatched and had transpired.
Bizarre piled on tragedy. It left the whole world stunned for months. It froze that day in our memories, forever. Presidential assassinations were things that happened in U.S. history books. Abraham Lincoln; James A. Garfield; William McKinley. All ancient history.
Except it wasn’t. John F. Kennedy had won office in a close election, with such good looks, humor, aplomb, charisma, that had seldom, if ever, been seen in the Oval Office before. We saw pictures of him in his rocking chair; saw photos of little John-John playing under his dad’s desk while JFK took important phone calls; admired the beautiful Jacqueline Kennedy in her chic, incomparable outfits. We laughed at Vaughn Meador’s “The First Family” album, which poked friendly fun at the Camelot White House and its dashing, handsome head.
On Nov. 22, 1963, that all changed in a flash. It’s a day all of us who were alive then, will never forget. Pray God that it’s never repeated.
John F. Kennedy had been our hero, our night in shining armor (especially to the women, who were wowed by his good looks and charm). He was young, and dash and style. We had had thirty years of Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair, short, average Harry Truman, bald-headed, grandfatherly Dwight Eisenhower. It was as if a monarch who reigned for 50 or 60 years, was suddenly gone from the scene and succeeded by a tall, handsome grandson. And then, suddenly, he was gone …
Johnny, we hardly knew ya …
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