What happened on that November day in 1963?

Today is the 53rd anniversary of one of the most tragic episodes in U.S. History. Of course, I’m referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Those of us who remember that day know exactly where we where and what we were doing. It hits closer to home for me, as I lived less than a mile from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where the autopsy was performed.

My father, Dr. L.S. Hansen, was chief of the dental and oral pathology division at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and executive officer at the Naval Dental School in Bethesda. He was also an associate professor at the George Washington School of Medicine. Later, he became vice chair of forensic medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

While Dad was not directly involved in the autopsy, he certainly knew those who were. His colleagues were Drs. J. Thornton Boswell, James J. Humes and Pierre A. Finck. Boswell and Humes performed the procedures, while Finck acted as an advisor.

At the time, Dr. Finck was chief of wound ballistics pathology at the AFIP. He was considered the world’s leading expert in this field. However, Boswell and Humes were not extensively experienced in autopsy procedures.

Here’s a sequential historical synopsis following the assassination event:

Within days, President Lyndon Johnson formed the Warren Commission in hopes to quell any rumors of conspiracies. The findings were released in 1964. The commission concluded that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had acted alone and that all shots fired came from the Texas Schoolbook Depository building in Dallas.

Of course, this action did nothing to dampen rumors and accusations of international or even mafia involvement. For years, theories included revenge motives by underworld boss Carlos Marcello because Attorney General Robert Kennedy illegally deported him.

Others thought Fidel Castro was involved as payback for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Another concluded that the Russians were acting vindictively over the president’s public victory in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1969, controversial New Orleans prosecutor James Garrison charged Clay Shaw in an alleged conspiracy, accusing the businessman of being part of a Kennedy assassination plot. However, evidence was so defective and witnesses so flawed that Shaw was found not guilty by the jury in less than an hour.

Even Hollywood got into the act. Perhaps the most famous was Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK.” Stone’s production used “creative license” by making Garrison a hero and inserting fantasized “facts” about the case not found in evidence. Yet most people today believe the film is accurate.

Another was a 1990s British-made “documentary” aired on the Arts and Entertainment Network. It claimed that the president’s murder was carried out by hired French assassins.

So after more than a halfcentury, where do things now stand? During all this time, no one has ever come forward with any irrefutable evidence that the findings of the Warren Commission Report were inaccurate. Conclusions of the report have been duplicated by private researchers, public agencies and other organizations — even the TV series, “MythBusters.”

Contrary theories also have been debunked, including the four-shot “open mike” police motorcycle explanation (a consideration of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978) and the “grassy knoll” second-shooter scenario.

Despite my doubts at times based on various media stories, my father never really wavered from the findings of his professional colleagues. At the time of his death in 1993, nothing was found in his personal papers to indicate otherwise.

Drs. Boswell and Humes are now deceased as well. Last time I checked, Dr. Finck is still alive at 93 years of age and ironically, living in Dallas.

The National Naval Medical Center has become the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Congress closed down the aging Walter Reed facility in Washington, D.C. and combined the two hospitals in Bethesda.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, a world-leading diagnostic center and medical museum, was closed in 2011 due to an unwise and unfortunate cost-saving measure.

For those interested in more detail on the Kennedy assassination, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s extensively researched book titled “Reclaiming History” provides an excellent account of the entire saga and aftermath about one of history’s most chilling and examined events.