I just got a phone call this morning from my buddy, Peter, who I grew up. He said, “Man, can you believe it’s been 50 years?”
“No, I can’t believe it.” I answered.
“Do you remember what you were doing?” Peter asked.
“Yes, I remember. I was sitting in my history class.”
Peter and I talked for a while and then I flashed back to 50 years ago today:
I was in the 11th grade at Wilson High School in East LA and I wasn’t paying much attention to politics. I was more interested in hanging out with my buddies and checking out the girls when suddenly an obviously upset vice principal came into in my 5th period class and said, “The president has been shot.”
What’s she talking about? I wondered. The teacher went to the front of the class and said, “Class dismissed.” That seemed strange. We walked out of the classroom and everybody seemed to be lost in confusion and not sure what to do. The loud speakers announced, ”Please come to the assembly hall.” I started looking for my buddies when I noticed some students crying and I thought about what the vice principal said about the president being shot. “Can that be?” I wondered as I made my way into the assembly hall.
Where were you on that day?
Dallas, “The Big D”
Dealey Plaza
The Grassy Knoll
Jack Ruby
The Texas School Book Depository (Suppository)?
“The President Has Been Shot!”
“JFK is dead.”
The Parade in Dallas or the “Motorcade”
Camelot (Harmonious, perfect society)
Who Did It?
The Conspiracy theories.
The Mafia?
The Secret Service?
Castro?
LBJ?
The Military Industrial Complex?
Big Business? The Oil Industry?
The Soviet Union? The KGB?
The CIA? The FBI? (Hoover?)
It couldn’t possibly be that a nobody, a nothing like Lee Harvey Oswald could take down our glamorous , beloved president Kennedy. How could that possibly be?
More than 70% of people today believe that the Warren Commission was wrong and that there was a conspiracy of more than one shooter.
Hard to swallow The Magic Bullet: One bullet zig-zagged through both through JFK’s head and then into Gov. Connelly’s lung, his rib and through his wrist and then the bullet be practically unscathed.
Questions about the commission’s failure to interview some Dealey Plaza witnesses; review the discrepancies between the conclusions of the Parkland Hospital physicians’ examination and the Bethesda [Maryland] Naval Hospital’s autopsy photos; investigate the destruction of the presidential limousine, a vital piece of forensic evidence; evaluate the Dallas Police Department’s interrogation of Oswald; and other concerns,
have led many assassination researchers to reject the Warren Commission’s conclusions, either in whole or in part, and argue that
more than one person fired gunshots at President Kennedy that day as part of a conspiracy.
The Legend:
Very likable, charismatic personality with the promise and excitement of a young, 46 yr. old leader who was from a wealthy family but who was loved and admired by most everybody, including the well to do, the middle class and the underclass, including everybody I knew in East LA.
Even the Press loved him.
He was like a rock star, (but not like Michael Jackson).
Men and women loved him. Hell, he was apparently a Casanova. Marilyn Monroe and his romantic liaisons.
We all loved his relaxed, James Bond style. Sort of like how young people love today’s Hip Hop, Rap music stars. (P. Diddy, J-Z, Eminem, 50 Cent.) Except instead of saying he’s the baddest dude on the block, he was actually trying to make the world a better place.
Witty.
Poet.
Idealist.
Self-effacing.
He started The Peace Corps, began the government working with Civil Rights leaders. He defused the Cuban Missile Crisis which, in the wrong hands could have very easily been WWIII.
(Which really was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union).
He was a great speaker and a WWII hero.
Besides, he was young, good looking, sexy and had a great smile.
Today he’d be 96 years old. And probably not as well thought of or loved.
The gruesome Zapuder film footage and our fascination with it.
Botched autopsy and all the unanswered questions.
The end of our innocence.
Soon after came Vietnam leading up to today’s mistrust of government and
Iraq and terrorism.
JFK represents to me what could have been
but for greedy, selfish people.
Sadly, it seems that’s what our entire socio-economic system is still based upon greed and selfishness.
Enron, WorldCom, Wall Street scandals, the bank bailouts – and their cronies in The White House, Big Business, Big Oil, HMO’s.
That all got worse when JFK was assassinated.
And like vultures circling above, power hungry politicians and their big business special interests cronies went for the throat of our society and are still feasting today on the power vacuum created by JFK’s assassination.
Dealey Plaza
The Grassy Knoll
Texas School Book Depository
The body of President John F. Kennedy lay in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 24, 1963.
The Zapruder film clearly shows the kill shot came from the front. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.