The day the Kennedy came to Dallas, my fathers office was on the second floor of a building overlooking the street the President's motorcade route took through downtown. He raised his window and watched the President, the First Lady and the Governor drive by. The motorcade took a right turn off of Main St. on to Houston, and made a sharp left onto Elm. When the President's car turned onto Houston, my father shut the window and turned on a radio to see if KRLD was covering the President's visit. Being an old tube radio it had to warm up. First, there was some music playing then a voice on the radio but in the background shouted "The President's been shot!!" My father asked some of his buddies if they heard the same thing. They thought he was making a bad joke and one co-worker switched on his more modern transistor radio and the commentator was saying the president's car was being rushing to the hospital and Kennedy had apparently been shot. They were all in shock. The company closed early after the announcement that Kennedy was dead. I was supposed to go with my father to work and see the president, but as I had a spelling and also a geography test that day, I went to school. At school, my 4th grade class had been to lunch and the teacher was talking when the principal's voice came on the speaker and asked all teachers to come to the his office. A few minutes later, she came in with a pale blank look on her face and told us, "the president has been shot, and we have been informed that he is dead." A short time later, we were told that the school was closing and to gather our belongings and go home. Also, the school would be closed on Monday. That was a crazy weekend. Oswald, killed a policeman in Oak Cliff, was captured in a theater, and accused of being the shooter of the President and our Governor. Jack Ruby shot Oswald which I saw live on TV. It was a crazy and surreal weekend. Since 11-22-1963 I've walked by Dealey Plaza on my way to Court or driven the route in front of the old Book Depository and I remember the weekend of the assassination, vividly. Sorry for the long-winded response.
I wasn't born until a couple years later, but worked in downtown Dallas for a while and drove through Dealey Plaza every Friday as I hit the road back to Austin. Every time it was a surreal and sobering experience. My parents were both in high school in San Antonio and their respective schools, both near downtown, shut down and the student bodies walked to the route the motorcade took there to catch a glimpse of him. Both said the next day is burned into their memories, not just because of what happened, but because they saw him waving to them 24 hours prior.
Thank you. It was one of the many moments from my childhood that will never be forgotten, like watching Sputnik fly over, the launch of the first American to make a sub-orbital flight into space, our guys landing and walking on the moon, and Islamic justice seeing some poor schmuck convicted of theft have is hand cut off in public.
