November 22, 1963– President John F. Kennedy is Murdered in Dallas
The school principal made an announcement over the intercom. With the news, the elementary school secretary had been calling parents for permission to send students home if possible. I decided I wanted to walk the 10 blocks home. My mother, who worked full-time, did leave her job and met me there. We decided to go to a little cafe in our South Hill neighborhood of Spokane. We ordered grilled cheese and tomato soup, but then we didn’t feel hungry enough to eat.
My father traveled for his job, but he came home early from Walla Walla, a few hours away. The three of us watched the news broadcasts on our black and white television.
Kennedy was shot about 12:20 p.m. as the Presidential limo entered the approach to a triple underpass. He died at Parkland Hospital about 1 p.m., though doctors said there was no chance for him to live when he reached the hospital.
The assassin, fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building near the underpass, hitting Kennedy in the head.
With the country mourning its dead President, Lyndon B. Johnson, took the oath of office as the 36th President of the USA. Following custom, the oath-taking took place quickly, just an hour and a half after the assassination.
A Federal Judge from Dallas, Sarah T. Hughes, administrated the oath in a hurriedly arranged ceremony aboard Air Force One, the plane that brought Kennedy on his Texas trip and on which his body was taken back to Washington DC.
Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy, her clothing still flecked with blood from the assassination, stood behind the vice president as he raised his right hand in the forward compartment of Air Force One at Love Field. Two dozen White House staff members and friends were present as Johnson gave the familiar oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will perform the duties of President of the United States to the best of my ability, and defend, protect and preserve the Constitution of the United States.”
55-year-old Johnson, the first Texan to become President, turned and kissed his wife on the cheek, and gave her shoulders a little squeeze. Then he put his arm around Jacqueline Kennedy, kissing her on her right cheek.
Jacqueline Kennedy, in tears, was wearing the same pink suit she wore on the fatal ride, a ride in which she has been wildly cheered by friendly crowds in Dallas before rifle shots rang out and the President collapsed in the seat of the car beside her.
Johnson had deliberately delayed the ceremony to give Kennedy’s widow time to compose herself.
My mother was horrified when I announced that I believed that Johnson was behind the whole thing.
By the late afternoon, Lee Harvey Oswald had been identified as the killer. He had worked for a short time at the depository, and the police encountered him while searching the building shortly after the assassination.
Oswald also was accused of killing a Dallas policeman, J. D. Tippit, whose body was found during the vast manhunt for the President’s assassin. Oswald had an extensive pro-Communist background, four years before, he had renounced his American citizenship in Russia and tried to become a Russian citizen.
My family finally felt like we could eat, and we had our dinner, plates on our laps, in front of the television for the first time ever. During dinner, there was a brief mention on the news that Aldous Huxley had also died that day, and I thought that, whoever he was, he must be feeling a little slighted in the attention department.
When I got into bed that night, I could still hear the television through the wall.
On Sunday morning, my parents and I watched in horror along with the rest of America as Oswald was shot down by Jack Ruby. I turned to my mother and asked: “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
I was not quite 10 years old, but I had been a Kennedy fanatic since the election in 1960, already planning on my someday marrying John F. Kennedy Jr. I took the loss hard, just as I would with the murders of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lennon.
It was my first bout of profound loss of innocence.
