50th Anniversary of the deaths of John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis.

[Cybermat47]

R.I.P. sirs

[Betonov]

I like Kennedy, he gave us locomotives to further boost our booming industry under Tito
I wish Obama would give us some now when we're broke

And R.I.P. to Lewis, a good writer is a luxury

[Jimbuna]

Two very different characters who both left their mark in history for different reasons.

[vienna]

I have been thinking lately of the assassination and what it was like on that day. I was 12 years old, looking forward to my 13th birthday, about three weeks away, when I would 'officially' become a teenager. I was in school on 11/22/63. It was a Catholic school and we were all in the middle of morning classes when the Mother Superior's voice came on over the intercom. She was speaking in a very shaken voice and she told us Kennedy had been shot and we should all pray for him and his family. THe whole class was in a state of shock and some of the kids started to cry. The nun teaching our class just burst out in tears, grabbed her rosary, and started to pray in a whispered voice. We all just sat there, all in silence except for the sound of sobbing form some of the kids. A short while later, the Mother Superior came back on the intercom and, in a voice filled with grief, announced the news just in that Kennedy was dead. She told us school was over for the day and we were all to go home. As I walked home in a bit of a dazed haze, I noticed how still and empty the streets were; there were very, very few people or cars visible. I woulod never see that sort of shock and silence again until 9/11/01...


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[u crank]

Originally Posted by vienna

I have been thinking lately of the assassination and what it was like on that day. I was 12 years old, looking forward to my 13th birthday, about three weeks away, when I would 'officially' become a teenager.

Interesting. I was 13 years old and I remember it very well. I came from a Catholic family, although not very devout. It was the only time we ever prayed together as a family in our home. I think my Dad, who was in the Canadian military at the time was pretty shook up by it. He liked Kennedy.

We also got the day off school for his funeral.

[vienna]

We also got the day off Monday from school, but we still had to attend mandatory Sunday Mass. I missed seeing Oswald being shot, live. When I got home, my mother was in a mixture of mourning for Kennedy and elation because Oswald "got what he deserved"...

One other memory I have is what happened the day after the assassination. There was a comedian/impressionist by the name of Vaughn Meader who did a spot-on impersonation of Kennedy's voice and he was very populsr at the time, appearing on TV and radio and releasing a wildly popular comedy album spoofing the First Family. I used to be a fairly good mimic and would do my version of the Meader routines for my friends and classmates. The day after the assassination, I was sitting on the top step of the stairs leading up to my house, still very much in a daze of shock. A girl who lived down the street, and who attended the same school and class I attended, was walking down the sidewalk when she saw me sitting there, stopped, became extremely angry and shouted at me "Damn you and your impersonations!!" She then storrmed off down the street. I would never have expected such an outburst from a nice girl like her and certainly not even the mild profanity. I never did my impression again and, even at my young age, I fully understood and appreciated where her anger and rage was coming from; if I had known a few more curse words, I would have also damned myself...


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[Sailor Steve]

I remember The First Family. Vaughn Meader never did his impersonation again either, as far as I know.

At the risk of injecting a little humor into what is a somber remembrance, I'll say two things.

1. Reading your remembrance of the incident, my first thought was "Charlie Brown, meet Lucy van Pelt."

2. There were many JFK impersonators at the time. My favorite, which I only read about in a magazine, went as follows: "I will be re-elected in 1964. My brother Bobby will be elected in 1968, and again in 1972. My brother Teddy will be elected in 1976 and again in 1980. Then it will be 1984 and no one will care anymore."

[vienna]

Vaughn Meader not only never did his impersonation again, his whole career dissolved into nothing virtually overnight. The album you mention was really very good, but it too vanished from stores, not bought, but hidden and returned to the record company...


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[razark]

I'm curious about the TV news coverage at the time. I asked my parents about it earlier. My father was in the Marines, and didn't have access to a television. My mother said that they listened to the radio at work, and she spent the next four days watching TV, but she couldn't remember much other than "seeing a man [Oswald] murdered on live TV."

Any of those old enough to remember, how did the networks handle it? I've only really seen today's style of 24/7 news channels, and I'd like to know what it was like in that previous era.

[Sailor Steve]

I was thirteen at the time, and my most vivid memory is also of Oswald being shot. As for the news in general, everything was still in black & white, and anchormen were always stern, authoritative figures who made you want to listen. Other than that I don't remember much.

See for yourself:
Compilation:


Full Coverage:
ABC:

NBC:

David Brinkley showing what a class act a reporter can be:

[magic452]

I was 21 at the time and just starting to take a real interest in politics.
I was working graveyard at Lockheed and was able to watch all the coverage.
I saw the very first reports, was just in total shock from that point on. Never thought I would see something such as this. I still remember it vividly.

TV news up to that point was mostly just a half hour evening broadcast.
The coverage of JFK was something new for the most part, they were making it up as events unfolded and in my opinion they did a fantastic job, real news reporters they were not the talking heads we have now.
They conveyed a real sense of the gravity and emotion of the situation.

I don't think even 9/11 had as much impact because JFK was something so completely different than anything I had ever seen before.

As to who killed JFK I'm pretty sure Oswald did but if someone presented some solid proof that something else happened I wouldn't be all that surprised, just too many strange things happened. So far I've not seen or heard anything even remotely solid to change my mind.

Magic

[vienna]

What I remember about the coverage is it was unlike anything that ever came before. Remember, there were no communication satellites, no internet, and the communication networks were little more thant phone lines and radio signal relay towers. The whole communications grid was being stretched to its very limits by the event. The grainy, low contrast images you see today are little better than what we saw at the time. There really was no such thing as 'high definition' in TV broadcasting in those days and videotape was still pretty much in its infancy. Some of the images you see now were actually recorded using a system known as Kinescope:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope


I remember, no matter where you went those four days, every Tv set and radio was tuned to the events surrounding the assassination. I also remember there was 24 hour coverage, a rarity then since almost all stations would sign off about midnight or 1:00 am until about 5:00 or 6:00 am (I used to enjoy one station signoff in San Francisco; before the National Anthem, they would show a film piece from one of the branches of the Armed Service, e.g., "The Marine Hymn", "The Navy Hymn", etc.).
Some of the newscasters, like Walter Cronkite, spent very long shifts on air and cemented their place in broadcasting history. All in all, it really was the first time the full potential of TV technology, as it was at the time, was fully realized...

As a bit of a footnote and to put the JFK coverage into persoective, it wasn't until 4 years later, in 1967, that the first worldwide satellite broadcast was officially presented:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(TV_special


Prior to then, transmission overseas was limited to radio-based signals or transatlantic cables. A lot of news footage was shot on film and transported to the nearest TV station where it was developed, edited and prepared for broadcast. During the Vietnam War, in order to avoid military censorship, news footage taken in the war zones was sent over land in a sort of smuggling operation to countries adjacent to Vietnam and then flown to the US for processing and broadcast...


(Damn I'm suddenly feeling very old...)


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