Snapshot is an irregularly-scheduled series featuring reminiscences of places and experiences in my life. To read all my Snapshot posts, please click here.
They say that when you’re a witness to some kind of tragedy, you remember everything about it: Where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing. I was only eight years old on November, 22, 1963, but I remember everything—at least my version of it—that happened on that fateful day and the weekend that followed. These memories have been stirred up—yet again—by watching a new three-part National Geographic documentary series, JFK: One Day in America (available on Disney+ and Hulu). It’s the kind of documentary I like: There’s no sonorous narrator guiding you through history, moment-by-moment, telling you what to think. Instead it talks to the people who were there and are still here now, 60 years later, including Jaqueline Kennedy’s Secret Service detail, Clint Hill (now 91), and Paul Landis (88), men who seem haunted by their respective places in history. Other witnesses include a husband and wife who were in Dealey Plaza where JFK was shot, and various reporters. All are in there 80s or 90s now and amongst the last surviving witnesses.
I was in the third grade at North Ward Elementary School in Tamaqua, PA in 1963. Miss Edwards was my teacher, and though this is politically incorrect, I must note that Miss Edwards was a very large woman. I have no idea how old she was in 1963, but if you acted up in her classroom, she would threaten to sit on you. In reality, she would lay her leg across your lap, an act that would get her fired these days. She wore colorful, Mumu-style dresses and had a sense of humor, something that was sadly missing from the sour old ladies we had as teachers for first and second grade, not to mention the upcoming fourth and fifth grades. She called me “Sassy,” which was short for “Sassy-man,” even though I was a quiet, shy, scrawny lkid and gave her no sass. I was afraid she’d sit on me!
November 22, 1963 was a Friday, and we had gone home for lunch. We were allowed to do that then; I forget how much time we had, maybe just a half-hour or 45 minutes, and I lived up the hill, not far away, but far enough to have to hurry home, chow down on a sandwich or a bowl of soup, and head right back out. But since it was a Friday, I may have just went to my grandparents’ house, which was just about a half a block away, for my grandmother’s traditional haddock, boiled potatoes, and stewed tomatoes lunch. She wasn’t Catholic, but sometimes she cooked like one, at least on Fridays.
The President and First Lady arrive in Dallas. Photo by Art Rickerby/Time & Life Pictures.
We had come back and class had started up and we were working on some kind of tedious lesson, like math or geography, when the principal, Mrs. Wynn, came to the door and motioned to Miss Edwards to come out in the hall to talk to her. While that happened, I remember looking out the window, at the big Catholic Church on the other side of the street, St. Jerome’s. I recall their bells started ringing and seeing a man dressed in a suit carrying a big wreath of flowers up the high front stairs of the church. Miss Edwards came back in, quite flustered, and told us that school was going to be dismissed and we were to go home and once we got there, we’d learn more about why we were sent home early. I think she told us a very bad man had shot President Kennedy, but I don’t remember if she told us he was dead or not. The bell rang soon after that and we all went home about an hour early. JFK died at 1:00 PM Central time, so that would have been 2:00 PM Eastern; I think school normally let out around 3:30 each day.
I went home and my mom was glued to the TV set, but still angry that her soap operas weren’t on. I don’t remember any discussion about the President being killed, but it was apparent by the wall-to-wall news coverage. Nothing else was on TV that weekend, no Saturday morning cartoons, no Bonanza on NBC on Sunday night “in living color,” no Ed Sullivan on CBS, either. The kids in my neighborhood—of which there were many—were allowed to go out and play on Saturday afternoon, but I remember being admonished a number of times to keep the noise down and be respectful … the President had died.
One of the most iconic photos ever, by Bob Jackson.
On Sunday morning, November 25th, I was alone in our sitting room with the TV on. My mom was in the kitchen. I saw them bring Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy down to the basement of the Dallas Police Station, to transfer him to the county lockup. I saw Jack Ruby push his way forward with a pistol and shoot Oswald in the abdomen on live TV. I yelled for my mom, “MOM! MOM! THEY JUST SHOT OSWALD!” and my mom was incredulous, accusing me of making it up. She ran into the room and saw the pandemonium on the screen and Oswald on a stretcher eventually loaded into an ambulance and taken to Parkland Hospital, the same facility where JFK was pronounced dead. Oswald “expired,” as the Dallas Police chief said in a news conference (one reporter yelled, “DID HE DIE?”), at 1:07 PM Central time, two days and seven minutes after JFK’s death.
The funeral for JFK was on Monday, November 26th, which was also the third birthday of his son, John Jr. I saw the former First Lady lean over, in her black veil, and whisper to her son, who turned and saluted his father’s casket. Later on, my grandfather bought me two commemorative books, one featuring photos and coverage from United Press International, called Four Days; the other was titled The Torch Is Passed … and was by the Associated Press. Each was filled with black and white photos and articles. My grandfather told me to write my name in each—which I did in blue ink, using my very best attempt at cursive handwriting—because I would want to keep them “forever.” I still have them.
These books were produced by UPI and AP, but were sold by various newspapers, which included their logos on the cover, at least in the case of Four Days.
I didn’t know why all this happened. Years later it was the Mafia, or the Communists, or Castro, because it just couldn’t have been that nobody, Lee Harvey Oswald. But back then, as an eight-year-old third grader, all I knew was that somehow the world had changed forever. 60 years later, I still believe that.
@innocent-bystander.com 
Leave a comment