The Kennedy Assassination
By James Donahue
Everybody who was living on November 22, 1963, vividly remembers what they were doing when we got the news that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Ours was no exception.
I was squeezed in at my attic desk, working on whatever it was that I had to work on that day. We rarely watched television during the day, but in her psychic way, Doris decided to turn the television on. It was on when there was a news break and Walter Cronkite came on to announce that Kennedy had been shot. She called me down. We stood for hours in disbelief as the news reporters lead us through the horrors of that dark day. We watched as Cronkite finally gave the choked-up announcement that Kennedy was dead, then took his glasses off. I think he did it to wipe away his tears.
The entire City of South Haven was stopped in its tracks that week. People stayed home or stood in office buildings and downtown stores to watch television sets as the strange events at Dallas unfolded before our eyes. We saw the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald as the primary suspect in the shooting, and then watched in disbelief when Jack Ruby jumped out from the crowd at the Dallas Courthouse and murdered Oswald on live television. We kept watching as filmed footage of the Kennedy death scene was uncovered and the images shown over and over again.
We saw Vice-President Lyndon Johnson sworn in as our next president on the flight back to Washington. We were still watching throughout that week as the nation went through the mourning and funeral of our president. People could not believe what had happened.
I continued making my daily rounds, but there was almost no news for me to report that week. There were no traffic accidents, no crimes, no public meetings. The wheels of local government came to a stop. The police had no reports of criminal activity. The only news event was a gas line leak that caused a house to explode into kindling on the outskirts of town. Nobody was at home when it happened so there were no injuries. I distinctly remember it because it was the only news story I had to cover for at least one solid week.
It was one of the darkest times in American history. After Kennedy everything seemed to change. I don’t think we ever fully recovered from that assassination. Even though the Warren Commission came to the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman, I never believed the story. A lot of people had the same unanswered questions that I did. This killing evolved into one of the nation’s greatest conspiracy theories, equal to the stories surrounding the assassination of President Lincoln.
By James Donahue
Everybody who was living on November 22, 1963, vividly remembers what they were doing when we got the news that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Ours was no exception.
I was squeezed in at my attic desk, working on whatever it was that I had to work on that day. We rarely watched television during the day, but in her psychic way, Doris decided to turn the television on. It was on when there was a news break and Walter Cronkite came on to announce that Kennedy had been shot. She called me down. We stood for hours in disbelief as the news reporters lead us through the horrors of that dark day. We watched as Cronkite finally gave the choked-up announcement that Kennedy was dead, then took his glasses off. I think he did it to wipe away his tears.
The entire City of South Haven was stopped in its tracks that week. People stayed home or stood in office buildings and downtown stores to watch television sets as the strange events at Dallas unfolded before our eyes. We saw the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald as the primary suspect in the shooting, and then watched in disbelief when Jack Ruby jumped out from the crowd at the Dallas Courthouse and murdered Oswald on live television. We kept watching as filmed footage of the Kennedy death scene was uncovered and the images shown over and over again.
We saw Vice-President Lyndon Johnson sworn in as our next president on the flight back to Washington. We were still watching throughout that week as the nation went through the mourning and funeral of our president. People could not believe what had happened.
I continued making my daily rounds, but there was almost no news for me to report that week. There were no traffic accidents, no crimes, no public meetings. The wheels of local government came to a stop. The police had no reports of criminal activity. The only news event was a gas line leak that caused a house to explode into kindling on the outskirts of town. Nobody was at home when it happened so there were no injuries. I distinctly remember it because it was the only news story I had to cover for at least one solid week.
It was one of the darkest times in American history. After Kennedy everything seemed to change. I don’t think we ever fully recovered from that assassination. Even though the Warren Commission came to the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman, I never believed the story. A lot of people had the same unanswered questions that I did. This killing evolved into one of the nation’s greatest conspiracy theories, equal to the stories surrounding the assassination of President Lincoln.