Remembering the Kennedy Assassination

Fifty seven years ago this Sunday, the world changed and went spinning off in a different direction.

Friday, November 22nd, 1963 started like any other day at McKinley School in Ottawa. I spent the morning in Miss Langbehn’s third grade class with my friends Tim and Howard. Released from school for lunchtime, I walked the half mile home with my buddy Howard, arriving a bit before noon.

At home, Mrs. Wiley, our baby sitter, had tuna sandwiches ready for my sister Roberta and me. We ate them quickly and then adjourned to the front room to watch Bozo’s Circus on WGN TV for half an hour. Around 12:30PM, Roberta, who was in first grade, and I left for the walk back to school. We didn’t know President Kennedy was shot right about the time we left home. In that pre-internet age, the shooting wasn’t public knowledge for another ten minutes, until Walter Cronkite interrupted the live soap opera “As the World Turns” on TV to announce the news at 12:40PM.

Blissfully ignorant, we played with friends at the school yard. Shortly before 1:00PM, we lined up at the school door, as we did everyday, to enter the school in a column of twos. While standing in line, my neighbor, Leonard Mayberry, ran up to me and a couple of others and said someone shot President Kennedy. At first, we thought he was telling us some kind of joke, but he kept repeating the news. It didn’t make sense and I thought, for whatever reason, he was making up the story.

As we entered our classroom, Miss Langbehn quickly quieted us down and told us to pay attention. The intercom came on and Mr Powell, our principal, announced President Kennedy had been shot, and his fate wasn’t yet known. I distinctly remember thinking he would recover. Mr Powell left the mic open with the radio on, giving us news and updates…. the criticality of the wound… the shooting of a police officer in Dallas… the arrival, and departure, of priests at the hospital…

The classroom was stone quiet as we listened to the intercom. Miss Langbehn, and perhaps some of the girls were quietly crying.

Although it wasn’t publicly known, President Kennedy was officially pronounced dead at 1:00PM, just as we were entering McKinley School after lunch. At 1:33PM, assistant White House Press Secretary, Malcom Kilduff officially announced to reporters at the hospital that Kennedy was dead. This update wasn’t on the news yet.

At 1:38PM, Walter Cronkite came on TV and radio and announced Kennedy was dead, and Lyndon Johnson would be sworn in as the 36th President of the United States. We sat there stunned.

A minute or so later, Mr. Powell said a few words. To this day, I don’t remember what he said, but it seems they were words of comfort. School was dismissed and we walked home, each of us in our own world.

The next several days are a blur to me now, but Roberta remembers sitting on the couch next to our mom, watching JFK’s funeral procession. She told mom she felt like she wanted to cry and mom answered “if you feel like crying, it’s OK”. They both might well have spoken for all of us.

Addendum:

• It’s hard to imagine how different the world could have been if JFK was not assassinated. What would have happened in Vietnam? Would Johnson’s Great Society programs of Medicare and Medicaid still have passed? Could a northerner like JFK have gotten the Civil Rights act of 1964, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to pass as LBJ did? What about Bobby and Martin? Would Nixon have run in ‘68? Would Watergate have occurred? The list of questions and alternate futures is endless.

• Thanks to my sister Roberta, along with friends Tim Stouffer, Howard Johnson, Leonard Mayberry, Joy Starjak Algate and Lynn Galley Robinson for their memories of that day. Tim and Howard were in Miss Langbehn’s class with me and had similar recollections of sitting in class listening to the intercom. Leonard, Joy and Lynne were in Mrs. Voight’s third grade class across the hall and their memories of the events, both in the playground, and the classroom were similar.

• Several of us remember Mr. Powell leaving the radio on with updates. The information I’ve provided regarding the radio content here in the blog is what I’ve pulled off the internet of what those updates were. I don’t have an actual recall of what was said, only that the intercom was on and the news didn’t appear to be good.

• Although the days following JFKs assassination remain a blur for me, my friends have some distinct memories. Tim remembers being confined to the house for the next several days, and not being allowed to play outside. Howard recalls the confusion of those days and not quite understanding what was going on. Lynne remembers watching TV with her dad a couple of days later and seeing Oswald shot on live TV by Jack Ruby. Joy, who later became a teacher herself, recalls the doppelgänger feeling she had when 9/11 occurred and she was again in a classroom, this time as a teacher.

• Mrs Wiley and tuna sandwiches – Mrs Wiley was our babysitter then. She was an older lady and lived about a block away. Tanya, our younger sister, was only four years old, and stayed home with Mrs Wiley while mom and dad were at work. Roberta and I may or may not have eaten tuna sandwiches that day, but I think it was our lunch about 90% of the time with Mrs Wiley…. tuna sandwiches and Campbell’s Tomato Soup.
• I pulled the timeline information for Kennedy’s assassination from Wikipedia. If you want more information about the assassination timeline, you can find it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_John_F._Kennedy_assassination