Forty-Two Years Ago Today...
President Kennedy is assassinated
President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed as his motorcade drives through Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy's suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was believed to have used a mail-order rifle in order to shoot the president from the sixth story window of the Texas Book Depository.
If you are old enough, do you still remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news?
Peter Worthington was an eyewitness to the assassination of Oswald by Jack Ruby, two days later...
C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died on 22 November 1963.
President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed as his motorcade drives through Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy's suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was believed to have used a mail-order rifle in order to shoot the president from the sixth story window of the Texas Book Depository.
If you are old enough, do you still remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news?
Peter Worthington was an eyewitness to the assassination of Oswald by Jack Ruby, two days later...
C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died on 22 November 1963.
posted by Chimera at 11:11 AM
2 Comments:
I wasn't alive at the time, but definitly something to be remembered. One thing I dont get about "The Great Kennedy", is when you dig on him, the guy was a bit of a scumbag, with the connections he had and the way he ran the country, yet he is one of the most revered presidents. Was America looking for a martyr when he died?
I was in middle school in Whitehorse at the time, and what I remember most is having my class interrupted with an announcement over the PA system. An enormous hush descended on the school -- as though all the sound had been sucked out of the air. Then teachers began to cry, and the principal sent everybody home.
I don't think they were looking for a martyr so much as they needed a romantic hero. Think of the times: not too long after HUAC, Alger Hiss, and a couple of other Nixon-born oopsies (like the Bay of Pigs -- that was Nixon's plan, but JFK took the responsibility for it -- and its failure). Ike was finally out of office -- the last Republican military leader. Vietnam was heating up. Nixon scared the shit out of everybody, and so did Goldwater. Jackie charmed the world, and together they made a handsome couple. Washington became known as "Camelot." And then there was the death of their last-born (Patrick, I think) that grabbed at the heartstrings of the country.
Years later, I'm still finding little items that point to the fact that he should never have been any kind of hero (indeed, the press knew damned near all his faults, but reported on almost none of them), but the world seemed to love him. The world loves him still.
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