1963....Dallas, Texas..."Shots ring out"

(Editor's note: Because of the enormity of the event, this post will deal only with the assassination of JFK, a subsequent post will have additional information from 1963.)

Fifth period Science class,  Fairview High School, Dayton, Ohio.. an announcement comes over the loud speaker in the classroom. "The President has been shot".................nothing more...no explanation other than those five words..... except for a few muffled cries,  the room was completely still 

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Was I going to go to war?.....Would there be a bomb dropped on my hometown?......Why would someone shoot my President?.......Should I go home and cry in my own room?...Should I even cry?.......I was only 15 and my life was turned upside down and hundreds of questions were racing through my mind.

Dallas was as foreign to me as China but that was where my President was dieing, .. bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to his head while his wife, covered in his blood, tried to gain some sense of what was happening.

 

Little did I know, I would be in Dallas only a year later......on my way to see my newly born niece in Waco and then 15 years later be moving to Dallas where I would spend the next 34 years of my life.


Most of you have heard the story told over and over about how the President and the first lady came to Texas to smooth over some ill feelings among the members of the Democratic Party, and you'll hear it again next year when the City of Dallas prepares for the onslaught of thousands of reporters and visitors as the 50th anniversary of his death is commemorated.

But this is simply my story....one that I think about every time I pass through downtown Dallas....every time a new conspiracy theory is debated over the local talk shows...  every time Dallas is in the news for something other than that dreadful day.... yet the newscasters find a way to bring back those events

I can remember Walter Cronkite wiping the tears from his eyes as he told the nation that the President had died. I can remember watching the Zapruder film over and over as Jackie climbs over the back of the limousine trying to protect her husband. I can remember the horror of seeing Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down. I can remember the picture of little John-John as he saluted his father's body as the funeral possession passed by led by the riderless black horse with the boots turned backwards in the saddle.

As I mentioned earlier, my first visit to Dealy Plaza was only a year after Kennedy had been shot. What surprised me the most was how short the span was of the path that the motorcade took when the shots were fired...and of course for that reason there have been so many conspiracy theories.How could Oswald have fired three shots?  Were there others hiding on the railroad tracks of the triple overpass. I wanted to get out of the car and stand on the grassy knoll.....try to embrace the moment...but we simply drove down the street and went on about our way.

Later, after I lived here for several years, I decided to take some time and try to learn as much as I could to   objectively format my opinion of what really happened. After the years have passed and millions of words have been written, I think I can finally put the events of that day to rest, well at least for now.

Sometimes we feel a need to magnify the villain  in these horrible crimes to the level of the event or to the level the person who was killed. The thought of simply a deranged man performing a deranged deed just doesn't seem to want to fit into our scope of imagination. We feel the need to make the perpetrator more than he was.

Whatever the reasons, whatever the facts may be.......the memory of where I was and what I was doing on Nov. 22, 1963 is embedded in my mind.


Next:   more of 1963...A year of unrest

1962....Cuba, Violence, Hatred and Peace

Robert Zimmerman, Folk Singer

While 100,000 people turned their television sets to watch President Kennedy tell us we were on the brink of nuclear war, a little known folk singer from Duluth Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman, was starting his career and his songs would help bring some sense to the insane world that was building around us.

 Aerial reconnaissance over Cuba had discovered that the Russians were building missile sites that would be the launching pad for total destruction of the United States some 90 miles away. While General Curtis "Bombs are your friends" Lemay, pushed for annihilating the whole island, cooler heads prevailed and averted a nuclear war.

The country was suspicious of everything...Even fluoridation of our water to prevent tooth decay was suspected of being a communist plot......my suggestion of just not brushing my teeth at night only got a stern look from my mom.

Two retail giants opened their doors in 1962....K MART and Walmart. K MART would go on to sell more than $483 million dollars worth of goods that year and Walmart would begin to capture pictures of the most idiotic people in the world that would eventually end up in emails 50 years later.

Sherry Finkbine, host of a children's show in Arizona, tried unsuccessfully to have an abortion in the United States after taking thalidomide, a sedative for pregnant women that was found to cause birth defects, and she goes to Sweden for the procedure.

The Ford Fairlane  is introduced. The "bossa nova" dance is introduced and Catholic officials in Buffalo, N.Y. forbid students from dancing to "The Twist"  because it is lewd and un-christain......That didn't stop places like Wampler's Barn and Forest Park, both in Dayton, Ohio, from having "open houses" on the weekends and teenagers would dance the night away.

Charles Van Doren cheats on the TV quiz show, "Twenty-one".............Ernie Kovacs, an early pioneering comedian, dies in an automobile accident....and EROS, a quarterly, erotic magazine hits the newsstands.

Ohio native,  John Glenn makes the first manned orbital flight for the U.S. .....President Kennedy , when asked at a press conference if any Americans were fighting in Vietnam, he answers "No" and moves on to the next question. ......and Judith Campbell, a go-between for Kennedy and "the mob" claims she aborted Kennedy's unborn child.

Gary Powers, a pilot on a U-2 spy plane gets shot down over Russia....and Rock Hudson and Doris Day star in 3 movies together.

Wilt the Stilt knocks down 100 points against the "Knicks".....Bobby Hull scores 50 goals in a season....and Barbra Streisland at age 19, stars as Miss Marmelstein on Broadway.....

Robert Zimmerman, that folk singer I mentioned earlier, writes "Blowin in the Wind " in just a matter of minutes in a cafe in Greenwich Village....and Frankie Avalon records his million-selling record "Venus"

Andy Warhol finishes his "Campbell Soup Can".....Marlyn Monroe dies of an overdose.......and Pete Best is fired by some band in England.

Casey Stengal loses 120 ......Tony Bennett loses his heart in San Fransisco....and the ZIP code is introduced in the U.S.

James Meridith enrolls at Ole Miss....I enroll at Fairview High School only to receive detention my first week see  First Week, First Detention  ...........and Jethro Clampett enrolls at Beverly Hills High School at age 22.

Sonny Liston knocks out Floyd Patterson......Frankie Valli sings "Big Girls Don't Cry"....and Bette Davis scares the crap outta me in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"

BOOKS

Fail-Safe
Sex and the Single Girl (by Helen Gurley Brown who recently passed away)
Ship of Fools

MOVIES

Days of Wine and Roses
Dr. No
The Longest Day
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
To Kill a Mockingbird

SONGS
Don't make me over
Duke of Earl
He's a Rebel (which would become my theme song)
Sherry
Wipe Out
Love me do

TELEVISION

The Beverly Hillbillies
Combats!
The Jetsons
McHale's Navy
and Johnny Carson begins an incredible career on "The Tonight Show"

Next: 1963....Freedom