In defense of the misspelled word, assassinations happened rarely, if ever, before 1963. Associated only with an event in the 1860s, the word stumped me.
I think I’m safe saying those of us in Dallas will welcome November 23, 2013. That’s the day our local culture, led by The Dallas Morning News, will finally have to move past the 50th year marking of the JFK assassination. While all the coverage is at the same time half hyperbole and half interesting, I contend the best memories are the personal and the best stories individual. I always lean in to hear the answer when regular folks are asked “What were you doing when…?”
That fall was my first in high school—Reagan County High School. We freshmen were subject to the whims of juniors and seniors, and early that September, I received a toothbrush with instructions to scrub the school’s floor. The note attached said: “A little nothing for a little nobody.” This gentle hazing was an accepted and expected part of being initiated into high school, the heart of adolescence.
If you were in band or sports, you were subjected to further harrassment. My scrapbook has a note from the band director about a game trip: “You upperclassmen help the underclassmen (Fish) because this is their first out-of-town game and first football game.” He was a nice man, but help is not exactly what I remember receiving.
The next month on October 7, the band traveled to a music festival in Dallas. Detectives reading this will note this day was mid-week and during the State Fair of Texas. The trip is seared into my mind because I got sick. So sick the bus stopped at the Dublin Texas hospital, right on Highway 67. Surely an upperclassmen was ill, too. I can’t believe they would stop the trip just for me. Back on the bus, we continued on, but I wasn’t to recover for three days.
We stayed at Dallas’s White Plaza Hotel, and the band marched at the Cotton Bowl. One of the sponsors took me to a doctor at the now-replaced Medical Arts Building, 1725 Pacific, and I remember a long, fast elevator ride to his office. That night, in our room on the hotel’s fifth floor, friends Brenda and Candy supplied me with ice chips all night, and Vicki brought ice cream from the fair. (I know. Maybe at that time, traffic was less congested between Fair Park and downtown Dallas.)
Returning to Big Lake, the band made it in time to march in Friday night’s home game against Stanton.
Seven weeks later, Dallas was the scene of the JFK assassination. I don’t know if I made the diary entry you see at the top of this post that day or later. I confess to sometimes catching up with my diary-writing after the fact. Either way, the event became my generation’s where-were-you-when-something-big-happened question.
Dallas in the early 1960s. Postcard color by Jack Sounders.
Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum has on display some of the art placed at the Hotel Texas during the Kennedy’s overnight visit. Docents often take time during the tour to ask visitors where they heard about the assassination. When I was there a lady who worked for The Dallas Times Herald (the afternoon paper), said she had skipped out at lunch to see the motorcade. She did see it, returned to work, only to be told the President had been shot. “No, he wasn’t,” she said. “I just saw him.”
That’s the heart of memory. Each telling is sad and dramatic. As seen in the comments, my friends have poignant observations, different from mine even though we were in the same, small place. One friend may have met Governor John Connally’s daughter that summer, and another friend, who, on his way to football practice, noticed the quiet tears of our school’s custodian.
After the RCHS football team, band, and a few parents returned from, what else, a playoff game in faraway El Paso , we spent what was left of the weekend watching events unfold in Dallas.
For those of us alive in 1963, the world was reshaped that autumn day. What’s in your memory?
Life Magazine cover art by Zintgraff Studio of San Antonio. Published Nov. 24, 1967 with an article by John Connally about why Kennedy went to Texas.
Hey Viv, I do remember that day. I must not have had a class that year directly after the lunch break because I came into the building after the bell had sounded and could hear the usual schoolroom noises. I got to the terazzo Owl just about the time Magruder made the announcement that JFK had been shot. Immediately the school noises stopped and the quietness was startling. As I walked down the hall I could here from inside the rooms the crying and sniffling of many of the girls. The band kids came in after practice making their their usual disturbances, but immediately fell silent when they heard the news. Magruder put one of the radio spots on the PA system and that was class for the remainder of the day.
Such a long time ago. So much water under the bridge.
Thanks so much, BT for reading and taking the time to comment. I find myself craving the memories of others, especially after so much time. I am always amazed at what else was going on around me that I was unaware of. Teenagers, huh? Best to you.
Is it possible? 50 years? It really does not seem all that long ago when I walked out of the back door of Reagan County High School on my way over to the gym for the last class of the day. I had barely heard the news about JFK and walked from that point to the gym wondering if it were true. On entering the gym, I saw the face of the school custodian, Mr. C.C. Reed, leaning heavily on his wide dust mop with tears streaming down his face. The world changed in an instant for many of us of that age. As I sat in the bleachers listening to the radio over the intercom and watching the reaction of Mr. Reed, it seemed the tears we shared, his in the open and mine hidden, were not the last tears to be shed in the years to come……
I remember being in Mrs. Poehler’s home economics class when Mr. Magruder made an announcement over the loud speaker. There was a certain concern that the border would be closed and some football players who wanted to go across the border, since they were in El Paso, would not get to go. They did close, but I am not sure for how long. Jo
Thank you for reading, Jo. I still can’t believe we made that long bus trip. I don’t remember anything about it, except the stands were pretty empty for a playoff game.
I, too, remember being in class when we heard the news. It was the first time I had the feeling that time froze and then experiencing at only 17 years of age the overall shock, disbelief, and and dark collective acceptance and uncertainty of the nation the next few days. It was strange and was not even remotely duplicated until 9/11. my visual memories of that day and those immediately after have been influenced by the media, but the emotions as well as hearing the news are intact.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Lois. Media has influenced all our memories. At the time, we only had two TV channels in my house: CBS and NBC. Vastly different from today.
I was in 5th grade and we were returning to the OLD 5th grade building after music class in the main elementary building when we heard the news from other kids on the playground (it was recess).
My mother (who knew I loved history) told me to soak all this up because IT WAS HISTORY BEING MADE. Until then, I had thought “history” all happened way before I was born. She was right and since then, I’ve read many books and seen many video presentations about the assassination, and I still can’t say exactly what happened or who was responsible.
I also remember my mom was watching TV and saw Ruby shoot Oswald live. My grandmother and I were in church and didn’t find out about it until we got home.
My uncle in Irving (my dad’s brother) was the second juror to be selected to serve on the jury in the Jack Ruby murder trial. Years later he was the physical plant director of Parkland Hospital.
Thanks, Jim. Did your uncle end up serving on that jury? Lots of great stories out there from surprising people.
Yes, Vivian, my uncle served on the jury that found Ruby guilty. We were thrilled to see him on TV during the trial, and his wife and two young daughters were interviewed on the nightly news after he had been selected for the jury. It was a circus. I remember my grandmother had a TV in her room and saw the interview and when it was over, came into the kitchen and said “Did you see June (my aunt) and the girls on TV?” Mother went “Wha…??” Seems my grandmother always watched Huntley & Brinkley (where the interview was) while my mother always watched Cronkite (that did not have the interview). My mom was livid at having missed it. Ha! (no video recorders then)
Great story. Thanks, Jim.