It’s a question that’s been asked, again and again, for 50 years now. The generations that fought two world wars elected John F. Kennedy as the 35th president, but it was the nation’s post-war generation, Baby Boomers, who would identify with JFK most keenly and come to carry his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 as the defining event of the times, much the same way future generations would come to regard Sept. 11, 2001.
A president who served a short time (January 1961-November 1963) would come to occupy a prominent place in U.S. history.
Where were you? Everyone seems to recall in an instant. The question, however, is a bit more complex for San Antonians and South Texans. Many who were alive then and are alive today want to talk about Nov. 21, 1963 before they get to Nov. 22. The day before the assassination, after all, was the last full day of the Kennedy Presidency and it was spent largely in San Antonio.
We asked a sample of San Antonians — not all of whom were living here back then — to share with Rivard Report readers their memories. After you’ve read theirs, why not send us yours? You can post your own remembrance in the comments at the end of this article or post your remark on the Rivard Report Facebook page‘s story link. (Note: comments made on our Facebook page are imported to our website.)
Former Mayor Lila Cockrell
On Nov. 21st, I had been seated with the other members of the City Council at Brooks Air Force Base in the assembled audience and listened to President John F. Kennedy’s speech that day, and had felt so privileged to be in that audience.
The next day, I was at home when the phone rang and my fellow City Council member George De La Garza was calling to ask if I had heard that President Kennedy had been shot while in a motorcade in Dallas. I rushed to my television, turned it on, and then sat down in front of it watching the scene unfold. When it was finally announced that the President had died, I continued to watch the ongoing events as Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the President of the United States by Judge Sarah T. Hughes, who was a friend of mine, dating back to the days that Sid and I, and our two daughters, had lived in Dallas and I had served as President of the League of Women Voters of Dallas.
Later that afternoon I had a call from my mother, Velma T. Jones, who lived in Fort Worth. She told me that she and my stepfather, Ovid W Jones, had driven over to Dallas that morning and were standing on the street in front of the Dallas Athletic Club as the motorcade went by, and waved to the President.
They then went into the building to take the elevator to the second floor dining room where they had reservations for lunch, and then, as they got off the elevator, saw a group of people, huddled around a television, saying that the President had been shot. They were stunned, having seen him in the motorcade driving by, just five minutes before. It was a very sad and tragic time in the history of our country.
William G. Moll, Television Executive, Broadcaster
It was noon, Nov. 22, 1963, Austin, Texas, when I picked up my priceless White House Press Credentials to cover President John F. Kennedy’s speech planned for that evening at an Austin banquet. Twenty-five minutes later, driving on I-35 toward my home, I heard on KLBJ Radio, “… the President has been shot.”
For the next 72 hours I went sleepless, working nonstop as a reporter alongside editors and producers to craft what would be the first nationally televised documentary about the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Bob Squier and Al Perlmutter were executive producers of the documentary which was broadcast nationwide on NET (National Educational Television), the precursor of PBS, airing on Monday, Nov. 25, 1963 in primetime.
Bob Squier went on during the ensuing decades to become a pioneer in international political consultation and advertising, essentially “inventing” the way politicians are packaged to appeal to voters. He and Roger Ailes did a “point/counterpoint” feature on The Today Show for several years. Perlmutter became a pioneer in the development of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory, later evolving into PBS.
Our LBJ documentary has been lost in the intervening half-century since the assassination and now long forgotten. That weekend? Every moment of those sleepless 72-hours – never to be forgotten.
Frank B. Burney, Attorney
All week long my parents were talking about the visit to Texas by the President and, particularly, Jackie, at the invitation of President Johnson. On Nov. 22nd, they headed from Corpus Christi to Austin for a dinner with the President and Vice-President that would never occur…
Prior to leaving, they showed me their tickets, and there was an assignment from our third grade teacher to write about a story in the news.
I penned a Pulitzer-worthy manuscript, which my family framed with a copy of the invitation, the tickets for the dinner they never attended, and an article from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times to memorialize this event.
I also enclose a letter [download PDF here] from my father to my brother, who we affectionately referred to as Judge, (do you think my parents wanted a lawyer in the family?–he turned out to be a Jungian psychologist, but that’s another story), about a trip to the White House by my father for an organizational meeting of what would become the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. Interesting inside look at the JFK presidency…
Sheila Black, Gemini Ink executive director
I was two years old. We were in Minnesota, my mother and I (I have no memory of this). It was coldish and I was dressed up a snowsuit and holding my mother’s hand. She was walking across the University of Minnesota campus to the to meet my father, and she noticed people behaving strangely–several people crying, even bending over double or running.
It was the Cold War and she had a panicked thought that a bomb had exploded somewhere and this was it: The End of the World. She ran up to a young man and asked, “what is happening?” He told her President Kennedy had been shot. She says she told me not to forget this…
Fr. David Garcia
I was a freshman at St. John’s Minor Seminary on Mitchell Street behind Mission Concepción on the Southside, where I now am the priest in charge. We all walked down the street two blocks to Roosevelt Avenue to see the motorcade on its way to Brooks. There were about 200 high school seminarians all dressed in black pants, white shirts and narrow black ties. We must have been quite a sight lined up on the street as the president came by.
He looked at us and it seemed that he asked someone else in the car with him who we were. It was a fleeting moment, but one I will never forget. The next day we were at study hall when the news broke and we all spent the next several days glued to the television. Our youth was shattered that day. As the years have gone by, I am more and more grateful I was a part of history on the last day President Kennedy was alive.
Robert Marbut, Alamo Colleges professor, urban studies expert
I was only three years old.
I remember the funeral with the horse drawn caisson and the boots on backwards in the stirrups on the riderless horse.
My mom was so upset, and she had the TV on all weekend.
I kept asking why she was so upset and I kept asking her why were the boots on backwards on a riderless horse.
This is the third oldest memory I have of my life.
David Lake, Co-founder Lake/Flato Architects
I was in school at Highland Park Elementary. I was looking out the classroom windows to the old quarry stone walls and the play fields below. I remember because I was snapped back to the blackboard by the sudden entry of Principal Hague who was clearly not himself. Mr. Hague was a stickler for protocol and this sudden appearance was out of the ordinary. Typically he only appeared after the nuke dive below your desk drill or the tornado rush to hall escapade.
He said, “President Kennedy has been shot. School is closed. Your parents have been called. Please leave the school respectfully in honor of our president.”
When I rode my bike home I was watching the front yard dramas: kids opening their front door and moms coming out to grab them; cars pulling into drives with loud radios and Cronkite sure details and questions; Mothers weeping as they collected kids. The world seemed tilted again, off kilter, like the time Premier Khrushchev was slamming his shoe on the table and photos of fuzzy gray missiles were shown.
The sky seemed less blue because of the evaporation of kids from their yards to indoors. When I walked in my house, the TV was on with a constant looping of the motorcade and the slumping of the president and the anguished look of the first lady reaching out, turning and the
Secret Service man running and Jack Ruby’s “The Guy in the White Hat” and Oswald – and it plays over again.
My mom was crying in the kitchen – she always went there for solace – seeking her routine: washing something, doing something. And me? I’m hoping the world rights itself, while my brother scribbles in his coloring book – all red lines crossing.
Not a good day for our country.
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Related Stories:
JFK Conspiracy Theories: “They” Didn’t Do It
Countdown to Eternity: JFK’s Last Good Day Spent in San Antonio
A JFK Remembrance: Air Force One and a Fort Sam Houston Flyover
Veteran Healing and Integration at Future Patriots’ Casa
Poetry to Commemorate Veterans Day as Day of the Dead
From the Front Lines to the Classroom: What It Means to Serve
I was in Miss Wampler’s math class in the basement of Washington Elementary when it was announced that our President had died. The principal Mr. Lackey made the announcement. I’ve always remembered it. I also remember where I was I when the Challenger blew up, when Rev Martin Luther King was assassinated, when President Nixon resigned. There have been many events in my lifetime, yet the assassination of our young, vibrant President does in fact cause me the most grief for our country.
In the classroom at St. John Bosco.
I had just put my six-month-old daughter down for her nap in our quarters at Ft. Benning, GA, when I heard the news while watching “As the World Turns.” The post duty officer for the Infantry Center that weekend was my second lieutenant husband. He was to receive the official word from the Pentagon of the president’s death, and was then to relay it to his commanding officer who was the Adjutant General of the post, who was then to relay the message to the Commanding General of Ft. Benning. We stayed up waiting for the call which came at 4 AM the following morning! My husband was also an usher that Sunday at the Main Post chapel, and there was not a dry eye as the processional was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
I was a senior in high school in Tulsa, Okla. We moved there in Oct. 1963 from Baytown and I hadn’t settled in to either school or the city and didn’t care much for the state. So, I went home for lunch. The television was on and I assumed Mom was watching soap operas. Instead, it was a newscast. A shooting in Dallas. Mom stared intently at the flickering B/W images, wringing her hands. She looked up, her eyes wide with fright and said, ‘They shot the president.’
I didn’t know such things could happen anymore. I sat with Mom, watching nervous TV reporters try to soak up details by telephone on the air. They didn’t appear calm and in control as usual. This was a big deal. The president was shot. The governor of Texas had also been shot. They were both rushed to the hospital. The jumble of details pouring out of Dallas didn’t make much sense. Mom was relieved that Jackie was OK. She really liked Jackie. But the President was in surgery. I had to get back to class.
I walked through the rotunda of Nathan Hale High School toward my afternoon government class. Teachers stood in small groups, whispering. A few just walked in aimless circles. When I got to class, the teacher was weeping and the other kids were clearly unsure how to react. The bell rang. The teacher began talking about the shooting. Sometime around 1:30 pm, the intercom came on and the principal’s voice buzzed through cheap speakers, informing us all that the President was dead. The silence was deafening. And then the teacher began sobbing. Soon, they told us we could go home. And so I did.
I spent the next several days glued to that old B/W set, absorbing every contradictory detail of the shooting, the investigation and the preparation of the funeral. Every image – the limousine driving down a crowded street, the stunned faces after the shooting, Oswald’s capture and his eventual murder live on television, and the funeral with its brave widow and John-John’s salute and the long drive to Arlington all became fodder for lengthy conversations and feverish theories that we all sifted, reviewed and talked to death.
This was a big deal for us all. We were not used to public murders on such a scale. Soon, too soon, after MLK, Robert Kennedy, we grew thicker bands of callous around our thoughts, accepting a little too easily that someone could easily enough kill a leader over policy disputes. After the JFK assassination, we wanted facts, we wanted understanding of how this could happen in this, our America. We’re still waiting.
I was in my second grade class at East Avenue Elementary School in Gonzales, TX. The obviously distraught school secretary came to the door, called the teacher over, and said, “They’ve shot the president!”
I was in Mr. Lynch’s sixth grade classroom at Ft. Washington Elementary School, PA. Mrs. Lanning came into the classroom to tell Mr. Lynch that the President had been shot, who then shared it with us.
Fifty years ago, a plane flew low over my seventh-grade classroom at Cole Junior/Senior High School at Fort Sam Houston. The principal came on the public address system. “That was the president,” he exclaimed. The kids in my class felt elated that we had been so close to the most famous person on Earth.
Twenty-four hours later on Nov. 22, 1963 the principal came on the PA system again. And life has never been the same. (See my link above, “A JFK Remembrance: Air Force One and a Fort Sam Houston Flyover,” for more.)
I was in 1st grade at Holy Innocents grade school in St. Louis. I remember the nuns crying and we were told to go home. When I got home my mom was crying, and all I remember of those next few days was sitting in front of the TV. Thirty years later I was stationed at Brooks AFB and I interviewed people at the base who had been there when JFK visited on Nov. 20.
I was in Mr. B’s math class, in the 6th grade, at Middlesex Jr. High in Darien, CT. The principal came over the PA and announced that the president had been shot, that classes were canceled for the day, and that we were to head to our buses. As we filed out of the classroom, and shuffled on to the fleet of yellow buses lined up in the semi-circular driveway in front of the red-brick, two-story building with its shiny white cupola, the usually noisy moment was unsettlingly quiet. My silence was only partly due to what I realized even then was incomprehensibly tragic. I knew too that my birthday the next day, my 12th, could not, would not be celebrated. A small loss set against the nation’s deep and enduring pain.
I was in the 2nd Grade at St. John Bosco in Hatboro, PA. As a kid you don’t really understand but you know something bad happened. Watching everything unfold on TV was pretty mesmerizing, especially back then. Now it would be the lead on Entertainment Tonight.
I was in 8th grade at St. Martin Hall elementary school (across the street from OLLU). Sister Dorothy sent several of the boys to help one of the Sisters in the lower grades across Durango. Suddenly they came running back shouting, “The President was shot!” We were fortunate to have a TV in our room – KLRN was already going strong – so we watched as Walter Cronkite made that terrible announcement. The news hit all of us especially hard because the day before we stood along 24th street to watch and cheer as the President’s motorcade passed by after he visited Kennedy HS. I remember Sister Dorothy telling the boys to go lower the flag to half staff. We were all heartbroken – and changed forever.
Stockholm Sweden, Nov 22, 1963. About 5:30 PM I was sitting with our three month old daughter, Barbara. The Swedish TV was on and I heard the words “Dallas” and “Kennedy.” The tone of the voice told me something terrible had happened. My husband came home from work, the telephone began to ring as our Swedish friends telephoned with the news. We could not bring in Voice of America or Armed Forces Radio, but Radio Moscow was broadcasting in English; we heard details from them. We received messages of sympathy, as we had in August when, shortly before our daughter was born, baby Patrick died. It was a terrible time to be half a world away from home with no American friends. The Swedish people were devastated; they loved President Kennedy. I went to the US Embassy and signed the Book of Condolences, hoping someday someone from the Kennedy family would read it. It was my way to join my country in grief.
Bangkok, Thailand, where it was a Saturday morning when my family & I heard the sad news.
It was a Friday…I was 11 yrs old. I was in school in Cucuta, Colombia.