Posted on 11/23/2010 7:46:34 PM PST by johnwcassell
NOVEMBER 22, 1963 was a day many Americans still living will never forget....
The President and Vice President were in Dallas...
Most of the Cabinet were on a plane bound for Tokyo...
The country was preparing for Thanks giving which I was looking forward to spending with Helen Fairbanks, my teenage love, in Baltimore.
Whether you liked JFK or not, you found yourself listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, the Sound of Music and a song about "chickenfat" supporting Kennedy's fitness program.
You were YOUNG. Even going to Atlantic City High you could wake up JOYFUL.
It was just something in the air.
Some people, including noted author Jack Engelhard, said we lost our innocence beginning in the early afternoon when the first word from Dallas was flashed around the country.
I, of course disagree. Kennedy had a sordid private life and no experience governing. Rep. Howard Smith could halt the New Frontier by adjourning his powerful committee. Joseph Kennedy's mad ambition to turn his criminal millions into presidential power for some twenty years gave those of us who preferred the gentility and quiet, simple dignity of the Eisenhower years pause as well.
But those bullets that blasted into the head of the President on that fateful day did change the world for all of us.
The aura of youthfulness began to dry up. Helen and I had a great Thanksgiving....and we went to a Kennedy Era Hootenany... but things were about to change.
Nowhere can you find a more down and dirty, truly accurate description of the change than in Jack Engelhard's DAYS OF THE BITTER END.
The cities began to burn. There were tanks and National Guardsmen in the streets. Vietnam was escalated to a vicious slaughter... The Armed Forces were disintegrating with mutinies and fraggings. A whole division sat on the DMZ with the Army afraid to move them. Their officers refused to even try to take them out and the Pentagon felt it was too dangerous to bring them home.
As an Air Force officer I faced sit-ins... slow downs...
shutdowns...
There was a pall upon the land as that gross creature in the White House twisted arms ramming through Great Society opium to hook the economy on government aid.
Yes, I missed Kennedy. His successor had the nation in flames...mobs in Washington chanted "burn...baby burn
...burn that White House down."
It was nearly a half century ago...
Yet those of us there will always remember... Why wasn't this Black Day in our history observed with a pause... a minute of silence?
A lot died with the President that day.
Whether you liked him or not.
John W. Cassell
PS-I don't even know where Helen is now.
That was perhaps the other "horrific and indelible" day in my memory.
I had just gotten out of bed, and was in my office waiting for my coffee to brew, when I started hearing radio reports of a plane hitting the WTC.
I got the TV in the living room on, and sat with my coffee, absorbing the incoming live information. Within a short time, my wife and I realized that this was no accident, and that the country was undergoing a terrorist attack.
Needless to say, we closed the shop that day, and canceled all appointments.
Happened on my 25th.
^5!
I won’t be waxing nostalgic over JFK. But I will point out his death caused a lot of grief, for the same reason we’ll get a lot of grief if some asshole does a JFK number on Zero.
You can beat a flunky with logic, but how do you beat a ghost?
I was in my 5th grade class here in Pennsylvania.
Well, like I said: I don’t really recall anything except the parents being very serious and focused at dinner that night. In fact dinner, for them, was on the couch in front of the tube. Which in itself was odd at that time.
And I do recall afterwards seeing the Life magazine cover with JFK in the car in Daley a plaza right before it happened.
That’s pretty much the extent of it. Until some years later seeing the Zapruder film late one night and going.... Woa! Up until that time i had never really seen “blood and guts” on TeeVee, either real or imagined, like we do today.
I know that we’ll all remember the moments for that day, too. I may be jumped for this, but I believe it was more traumatic that the Kennedy day.
A few days old and planning to take over the world, and Obama was the best you could come up with?
So YOU’RE the One!
I and my younger brother were in the Air Force and both in Texas at the time. I was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base, San Angelo, and my brother was in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio. He played in the Air Force band the day before JFK headed for Dallas. After their performance, Kennedy shook each member of the band’s hand and pinned a Yellow Rose of Texas on each of their lapels. Next day he was gone.
By the way, that’s a terrific post. One thing - - it wasn’t all “downhill from there”. The Beatles and the “British Invasion” brought a lot of great music forward, and the space program, culminating with the 1969 moon landing, also helped make the ‘60s a miraculous time to grow up in. Add transistor radios, color TV, and “muscle” cars to the mix and the point is, it was a topsy-turvy, insane time, but it wasn’t all bad.
FRegards,
LH
I was reading "Atlas Shrugged" for the first time...1st year out of college.
I saw JFK the day before the assassination...went to see him and Jackie when they arrived in Houston...and was not his biggest fan. But a POTUS is a POTUS.
A POTUS was a POTUS, and then came along Zero. Man, we’ve fallen...
You’re right...I wouldn’t go to the door to see that jerk.
"Jumped" on Free Republic for saying that 9/11 was more traumatic than the Kennedy assassination? Not likely.
Politics aside, both incidents shook our nation to its core.
I was in a Manhattan recording studio working the board for some horrible Jersey group who was cutting a demo. When the announcement about Kennedy came we canceled the session and me and a group of studio musicians went out and got stoned on heroin....which we would have done even if nothing had happened that day.
Well, was at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, right outside close to the corner ... and didn’t really know what happened, at the time.
“That was the day that the 1950s died. Everything changed soon after that. Just three months later The Beatles arrived in America”
I’d say that Kennedy’s administration was a transitional period between the ‘50s and ‘60s. Things felt different (a bit faster and more dynamic) than the sleepy Eisenhower years, but the assassinations, counterculture movement, and the Vietnam War (ie. the stuff that really defined the decade) hadn’t happened yet
KENNEDY WAS SHOT???? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?
When I got back to the ship, I told the OOD that Kennedy had been shot and assassinated in Dallas, but initially he didn't believe me until he called the shipyard main office. Later he made an announcement over the 1MC, and noted that flags were to be run at half-mast. All personnel were ordered to report back by Noon Saturday, as most of the base would be sent up to DC for the funeral and as security. I wanted to go, but couldn't because of the work I was involved with, and the push to get the ship ready to refloat out of dock. Needless to say, that week and the Thanksgiving Dinner were very subdued, as we were all expecting a possible call to war footing on Cuba. However, thanks to Johnson instead of the Med I got to take the ship through Panama to San Diego, and was transferred of to a helicopter aircraft carrier up in Long Beach and several WestPac cruises.
In 1973, I got to see Executive Action. I do wish I had kept the newspaper print sheet they gave out, showing a lot of details from the film, and a listing and expose of the many witnesses they portrayed at the end:
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