November 22
The original ‘Where Were You?’ day
Here is a bulletin from CBS News: in Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.
—Walter Cronkite, CBS News, 1:40 p.m.
It would be cliché, and tired, to say that the nation “lost its innocence” 60 years ago today. The nation was never innocent, as if nations ever could be. Nations can be strong, nations can be victorious, nations can be an example for the rest of the world. But nations can’t be innocent any more than they can be loving. Nations don’t have feelings. A nation is a government with borders and constitutions. Besides, the things we have done to each other … .
But for a certain generation of Americans, 60 years ago today, they grew up. They had to.
The baby boomers, perhaps more famous and certainly more populous than the Greatest Generation before them, watched the TV media report on their felled young president in real time. (The Zapruder film did not make it on Walter Cronkite’s broadcasts. Even if he’d had access to it that day, surely he would have vetoed its airing in 1963.)
Americans heard the reports from Dallas just as “As The World Turns” started that Friday. Some Americans might have heard those reports live and watched Mr. Cronkite choke up. And many Americans were watching when the assassin was assassinated.
A bulletin from CBS News: President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, she called, “Oh no!” The motorcade sped on. United Press [International] says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal.
Repeating: President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details.—Cronkite, seconds after the first report.
When the shots rang out in the Texas air that sunny afternoon, storm clouds rose over the future of a nation. It wasn’t the invention of the modern-day conspiracy theory, but like Kennedy’s space program, it launched like a rocket.
The grainy 26.6 seconds of color film footage taken by Abraham Zapruder on his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera gave some Americans just enough knowledge to be dangerously wrong.
In the years since, many have tried to fill in the blanks of everything that occurred before, after and outside the lens of those 26.6 seconds—and there have been some good stories. For best, or maybe worst, example, take the movie “JFK”—please. As a critic once noted, the only things twisting around like magic bullets in that movie were facts.
Not only have millions of Americans come and gone believing more than one shooter was involved; millions more will. Warren Commission be damned, in the American mind, it remains an unsettled issue.
Questions remain. How could a bolt-action rifle be fired three times in such a short period of time, with such accuracy? What about the smoke above the grassy knoll? What was Lee Harvey Oswald really doing in Russia? Was it a coincidence Oswald’s death was on TV?
The Kennedy assassination may be the most investigated death in modern history. (There was no film of John Wilkes Booth & Co.) Those of us who believe that a lone gunman was involved on Nov. 22, 1963, do so with this understanding: The government can’t hide anything for long. The same government that can’t keep secret an affair in the Oval Office is supposed to be able to cover up this massive a conspiracy?
But maybe conspiracy theories are just human nature. This week, news reports say Elon Musk put “pizzagate” back in the news.
President Kennedy was shot as he drove from Dallas Airport to downtown Dallas; Governor Connally of Texas, in the car with him, was also shot. It is reported that three bullets rang out. A Secret Service man has been . . . was heard to shout from the car, “He’s dead.” Whether he referred to President Kennedy or not is not yet known.
The President, cradled in the arms of his wife Mrs. Kennedy, was carried to an ambulance . . . the car rushed to Parkland Hospital outside Dallas, [where] the President was taken to an emergency room in the hospital. Other White House officials were in doubt in the corridors of the hospital as to the condition of President Kennedy.
Repeating this bulletin: President Kennedy shot while driving in an open car from the airport in Dallas, Texas, to downtown Dallas.—Cronkite, 1:45 p.m.
Americans recovered, as we tend to do even after devastating loss. And we determined to get to the moon in that decade, just as John F. Kennedy had challenged us to do. Not because it would be easy, but because it would be hard. One biographer called Kennedy’s an “unfinished life.” It’s hard to argue otherwise. But his legacy seems to have a bigger imprint on America that would be assumed given how short a time he led it.
Many historians note that in the early 1960s, television’s impact was just beginning to emphasize politicians’ style—to go along with substance, at least for a while. So John F. Kennedy may be considered the first television president. His presidency might not have been the first to confront a nuclear Soviet Union, but it might have been the first, and last, to get close enough to Armageddon to smell the sulfur and fire. But the president kept his cool and negotiated Doomsday away.
After Kennedy came the civil rights congressional acts. Also an escalation of military efforts in southeast Asia.
His time was the beginning of so much. Some good. Some devastating to the country. But you could start with his administration. Many Americans of a certain generation certainly do.
From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: (reading AP flash) “President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.” (glancing up at clock) 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago. Vice President Johnson (clears throat) has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded; presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the 36th President of the United States . . . .