Where were you when John Kennedy was assassinated?

[JimHow]

I was in kindergarten class, barely five years old.
Sitting next to my lifelong friend Tony Ferguson, whose law office is currently across the street from mine.
A knock at the classroom door.
Mrs. Harvey goes out into the hallway.
She comes back in, crying.
The janitor told her that the president had been shot in the head.
I don't recall much else from that day, or that weekend.
But I remember that moment like it was yesterday:
Mrs. Harvey, crying, telling us that the president had been "shot in the head."

[Claret]

I was 3 so no school. Growing up in Brooklyn at the time my oldest memory consists of the horse drawn casket in the funeral procession.

Jin have you seen the new JFK explanation movie on Reelz? I forget the name but they contend Oswald missed a shot and a Secret Service rookie agent accidentally fired an AR-15 from 2 or 3 cars behind JFK and scored the second hit. The is a still photo of the agent holding up the only assault rifle on the scene. Apparently the Secret Service did not disclose much information to the FBI. Plausible yes, but likely that the agent scored a direct headshot randomly is a bit sketchy.

[JimHow]

That was fun when we went to Dealey Plaza Glenn.
I've done a lot of research on the Kennedy assassination.
I am 110% certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, having fired three shots, one that missed and two that hit the president, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the corner of Elm and Houston. He then exited the building and murdered Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit. He then ran into the balcony of the nearby Texas Theater movie theater where, with pistol wrestled from his hands, the fucking lunatic was apprehended some 88 minutes after Kennedy was killed.

You should watch "Parkland." It is okay, not great, they could've developed the Giamatti/Zapruder character more, but at least Tom Hanks tells it the way it really happened.

[hautbrionlover]

My first grade classroom. We heard the principal's voice over the school's PA system speaker tell us the President had been shot and I think we were sent home a little early. My father was already home when I got there. I had never seen my father so upset.

[JCNorthway]

9th grade Latin I class (OK I'm older than most of you). Chastised by the teacher because my friend/classmate had heard the news in the hallway and was trying to tell me. I was unable to learn the real news until after the end of class!

[DavidG]

Second grade classroom. PA announcement that President Kennedy had been shot in the head and we were being sent home. Walked home unsure of what it all meant but it felt like a bigger deal than just about anything I could remember. Got home to find Mom lying on the couch in front of the TV crying.

[tim]

Wow, this thread makes me feel young!

[stefan]

A sophomore in college, I was playing a pickup basketball game in the Rice gym. The announcement broke up the game and I returned to my dorm room to watch the news. Everyone was stunned, of course, and walked around in a daze for days.

[JimHow]

Were you at Rice when he gave his "we choose to go to the moon" speech ?

[dstgolf]

Grade 1. This was a big world event. Sitting in Miss Stevesons class and announcement was made but didn't understand what was going on. It wasn't until leading up to the funeral that we were told why this was such a big deal but memories sketchy. Most vivid and moving memories were of the funeral procession that we all watched in class with the teachers giving us some info re W's.

No question the visit to the 6th floor museum was a great experience and couldn't believe the number of people who are still moved by this man til this day! Can't believe that he was only 46 yrs old when he was assasinated(1917-1963). I always thought that he was older!!

[JimHow]

His brother Bobby was 42 when he was killed 5 years later.

[Claret]

Yes the 6th floor museum was a moving experience.

[Mike Christensen]

5th grade, having just turned 10 the week before, in Social Studies, section about Latin American countries, reading about Brazilian exports. A 6th grader was running from class to class yelling "Kennedy's been shot". Then the same kid, maybe a half hour or hour later coming by and sobbing out "Kennedy's dead". I don't remember getting out early, that wasn't how my school rolled. Remember watching the news nearly continuously for three or four days. Saw Ruby kill Oswald live. Remember watching live when Bobby Kennedy was killed too.

[Comte Flaneur]

I was living in Khartoum, Sudan at the time. I was only six months old so I don't remember it. Have they found out who dunnit yet?

[robert goulet]

-8 years old

[RDD]

5th Grade in parochial school.
All the Nuns were crying and we were all sent home.

And the book depository was an eye opener for me.
The camera adds distance. When you are there you realize Oswald was right on top of him.
So close............
.

[JimHow]

This story about the limo after the assassination is pretty astounding to me:

http://m.cbsnews.com/storysynopsis.rbml ... plitPage=5

[Nicklasss]

I'm born in 1974...

So Jim, where were you when Kurt Cobain died?

Nic

[JimHow]

Okay here's a trivia question:

How many actual presidential assassination attempts on sitting presidents (I'm not talking about threatened or planned attempts) have there been since Jean-Nicolas Maltais was born?

I recall when Kurt Cobain died, Nic, but I do not recall where I was. At home in Lewiston, I think.
April 5, 1994.... I was running for Congress for the first time.

[DavidG]

Without Googling, Reagan was shot, there were 2 attempts on Ford (both after '76?), so I can quickly think of 3. Events seen less distinct in more recent years, perhaps because of the constant blathering of "news" outlets magnify every inane detail. I can't think of any more recent...

[JimHow]

You are correct David. There was a plan to kill George H.W. Bush here in Maine after he was out of office but it was thwarted.

[DavidG]

I remember that plot now that you mention it. Didn't that fuel some speculation later on about W's motivation to go to war with Iraq?

[JimHow]

Yes that is indeed the story.
What amazes me is the lack of security.
I mean, it's not like there hadn't been assassination attempts before November 1963.
Lincoln, Garfield. McKinley,
Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest.
Franklin Roosevelt was shot at and the mayor of Chicago was killed.
Two Puerto Rican would-be assassins attacked Harry Truman, killing a secret service agent.
Oswald. Sirhan.
TWO attempts on Ford within a ten day period.
Squeaky Fromme! I mean, REALLY?
12 years after JFK, a Mainson family member is sticking a gun into the president's belly?
How could that happen?
Lennon. Reagan.
I just can't believe the culture those days of letting any nutjob come right up to these people.
There was a great story in the Lewiston paper the other day about a DC cop on duty at the time of the assassination.
I just love how you could go into church on Sunday mornings in DC and sit right behind the president.
Crazy!

http://www.sunjournal.com/news/lewiston ... on/1445772

[RDD]

Frontline had a great expose on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Really substantiates him as the lone gunman.

[JimHow]

Yes, to conclude that Oswald wasn't the lone gunman you really have to start stretching into some crazy government conspiracy theories.
Not that the U.S. Government hasn't been cap[able of doing some pretty crazy stuff, but... there are some things that are undisputed by even the conspiracy theorists that point to Oswald, for me at least, beyond a reasonable doubt:

There were at least 6 witnesses who saw a rifle coming from the 6th floor window.
The very first reports were of THREE shots.
It wan't til later that witnesses say they heard 4-6.
There is no dispute Oswald was working on the 6th floor at the time the motorcade came by.
Three shell casings were found at the sixth floor corner window (unless planted there by the police).
The rifle found behind the boxes was the same rifle Oswald ordered through the mail from Chicago months earlier.
Oswald left his house that morning with what he said were "curtain rods" wrap up in brown paper.
Oswald's palm print is on the rifle.
Oswald admits to exiting the building after the shooting.
I mean, where was he going? Out for a stroll? The president was just shot on the street right below him, and he's going out for a casual stroll on the street out back?
There was a BOLO announced almost immediately like in less than 2 minutes for a "slender white mail approximately 30 years old" with a rifle.
Officer Tippit stopped Oswald, after all, because of the description from that almost immediate BOLO.
Oswald shot Tippit. He was seen shooting Tippit and running away.
That's how they knew he went to the movie theater.
The conspiracy theorists would have us believe Oswald was wrongfully accused of shooting Tippit as well.
Even though the ballistics in the Tippit shooting match the pistol wrestled away from Oswald in the theater.
So, Lee H. Oswald was having a very bad day: Not only was he wrongfully accused of killing a police officer, he was wrongfully accused of killing the president of the US... and, subsequently, wrongfully accused of trying to kill the general six months earlier, the bullets of which matched his mail-order rifle.

It's possible, I guess, but not in the universe that we live in.!

[RDD]

His co-workers were on the 5th floor below him and heard three shots and the bolt actions.
They also matched his finger print on the riffle. 18 points matched.
An eyewitness watched him circle Tippet's car and shoot him in the head to finish him off.
The wind breaker was found under a car on the route to the movie theater.
On the way down the street he was seen darting in and out of businesses as the police paroled.
Another witness saw him dart in the theater w/o paying as the ticket tender was out looking down the street.
He continually lied in every fashion about the riffle.
He did not want any association at all with the riffle.
Why? Because he knew it was the murder weapon.
But NONE of these documentary programs convey how close he was.
When you go in person and look out the window of the sniper's nest and you realize he was right on top of the motorcade.
Thanks for taking us Jim!

There are so many other things also.
Like when his wife came home one evening and found him dry firing the riffle on the porch for hours. Firing as fast and smoothly as he could.
Also the attempted assassination of Ted Walker . His wife states he came home shaken and white as a ghost.

There's no conspiracy theory I know of that matches on as many points as Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone shooter.

[JimHow]

That is indeed a solemn and historical site Rob. Ineed, there are literally thousands of facts that point to Oswald as the lone gunman.

In my opinion, this is the best documentary on the assassination:

http://youtu.be/yg0f_QHNSUw

[Gerry M.]

Like someone stated previously also stated, the funeral is my earliest childhood memory. it's still etched in my mind, the muffled drums and the clatter of the horses on the asphault pulling thd cassion wagon. Having grown up Catholic in the suburbs of Boston, everyone around me was in a state of shock and disbelief for a week. Although only three at the time I could see the saddness in my mothers' face and it still haunts me.

[JimHow]

Yes I remember the walk home that day and knowing that something very, very bad had happened.
I vaguely remember the horses in the funeral.
My 89 year old father, raised a New England Catholic, can't even talk about it to this day.

[JimHow]

A biased perspective undoubtedly, but an interesting article nonetheless:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... newsletter

[DavidG]

JAMA published an account of detailed interviews with the physicians that attended JFK that fateful day. Their statements clearly and unequivocally debunk the fourth (or more) bullet conspiracy theories. I saved those issues.

I didn't go with you guys to the book depository building last spring because I'd been a few years earlier and didn't want to deal with the gravity. I agree that it is a haunting and simultaneously revealing site.

[Tom In DC]

To answer the original question, I'm not sure. But I was in a 2nd grade classroom when I heard the news. A very sad day for America, indeed.

Jim, there's a lot of gray area between "He didn't do it" and "he did it all by himself". How does Ruby fit in your scenario? Just a fine, upstanding American saving the country the expense of a trial and execution?

Maybe it's because I'm from the Mid-Atlantic rather than New England. Maybe it's because I'm a child of the seventies, where my college US History class taught that when Geo. Washington "slept here", he rarely slept alone. And let's not get started on Thos. J. and his role as a "Father of the Country". Maybe it's a local politics scene that includes Spiro Agnew, Marvin Mandel, Marion "The Bits Set Me Up" Barry, William "$50,000 in the Freezer" Jefferson (yeah, he's from Louisiana, but the freezer was in town), WIlbur Mills and the stripper in the Tidal Basin, the coke arrest earlier this week, and on and on, but I'm just not inclined to lionize politicians.

So JFK is sleeping (in the GW sense) with hookers and starlets in the White House while his wife and kids are elsewhere in building? (No wonder everyone loves Clinton so much!) And so what if he buys a couple of years worth of Cuban cigars in the week before he imposes the embargo? What a great guy! Yes, we've all been told how much would have been accomplished in Camelot's second term. Brings to mind Obama's comment to Putin about how he'll be able to help Vlad the Dictator-for-Life so much more after the elections. And the money to get JFK elected? How many people were killed in that episode of the Kennedy family soap opera to set the stage for a presidential assassination?

Maybe politicians just don't float my boat...

[JimHow]

I don't believe the US government Tom, and I'm from Maine!
If the question is whether Jack Ruby was part of a widespread conspiracy to silence the patsy Oswald, my response is that there is no evidence of it.
The most interesting thing about the Ruby shooting is that he actually entered into the building about 40 seconds before he shot Oswald. For there to have been a conspiracy, there would have had to have been some incredibly sophisticated timing between the government conspirators/sheriff deputies and Ruby to bring Oswald out at the exact moment that they did. One minute sooner and Oswald would have been gone.
There are lots of coincidences in any crime.
But when you actually walk through what happened, you usually find that they are in fact just coincidences.
A whole book could be written just about Ruby's last minute entry into the police station.
The bottom line is that it was really simple:
Like Oswald, he was an extraordinarily narcissistic little man.
Like Oswald, he decided to grab a gun and interject himself into history.
Like Oswald, the opportunity to carry out his insane plan presented itself.
He simply walked into the police station with a gun.
Almost immediately after he walked in, Oswald was brought out right in front of him.
And then he killed him.
That's hard yo believe and accept for a lot of people, but it happens every day of the week in this country.
There doesn't have to be a massive CIA conspiracy for it to happen.