Approximately one minute after this picture was taken, at 12:30 PM CST on Nov. 22, 1963

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas…

Ironically, that was a Friday, and today the 50th anniversary is also a Friday.

I was in the 7th grade, sitting in Mrs. Tye’s math class when she was called out the door for a hurried conference with someone (probably either the principal or assistant), I remember she came back into class with a stunned expression and tears streaming down her face; in a hushed tone told us that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.

I don’t think any of us actually reacted, probably because we didn’t understand the magnitude of what had just happened…

I remember a few minutes later the PA came on with a transistor radio being held up to the microphone and we listed to the announcer describing what had happened. I remember he said the President had been taken to Parkland Hospital, and asking people to pray for the President. At 1300 the announcer came on and said that the President was dead.  At that point I remember there were some hurried conferences and they cancelled school that day.

I remember going home and seeing my mother in the kitchen washing dishes and she asked me why I was home early.  When I told her, we turned on the TV to see the coverage on all three of the channels we could get.  I do remember watching Johnson sworn in on Air Force One, and it leaving for DC.  All the announcers were somber, and I probably asked a ton of questions that my mother couldn’t or wouldn’t answer…

Then there was the chase, capture and shooting of Oswald…

Those two days in Dallas changed everything in my opinion…

The mysticism surrounding the Kennedy ‘legacy’ started that day- Camelot, the Peace Corps, what ‘would’ have been, how good he was, etc.  That fantasy continues to this day, surrounding the entire family…

The endless conspiracy speculations aside, our beliefs about who and what we were took the biggest hits that day in my opinion. The Red scare in the 50s, the brink of nuclear war with Castro, Khrushchev in 1962, the space race, and the start of our involvement in Vietnam were all front and center.  Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite and others were providing the news, and everybody listened.  I think we believed we were still ‘winners’ and immune to all the political propaganda and ‘evil’ by the political parties.  I remember hearing that we would never make the same mistakes the Germans or the Russians or the Chinese had made with Hitler, Stalin and Mao. 

To me the quote, delivered in his inaugural address 20 Jan 1961, was what lead many of us to voluntarily join the military over the intervening years…

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

This sentence followed, and was his plea to the world as a whole…

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well on either side in hindsight…

Sadly, today that first quote seems to be reversed under the current administration, and I believe that it is the result of Johnson’s presidency come to fruition…  The Great Society stuff, the Detroit model city, Johnson’s my way or the highway attitude, etc…

We give billions of dollars to other countries in aid, and what do we get in return?  And Kennedy was a proponent of a strong military, he overcame strong opposition from the Army Chief to authorize the Green Berets, and was ‘fond’ of the Navy UDT since he’d been part of the small special operations community in WWII when he commanded PT-109.  He firmly believed small special operations groups had a place in military operations and their ability to disrupt much larger forces based on his own experiences.

I think if Kennedy were alive today, he’d probably be considered a right wing extremist…