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Add My StoryAuthor: Paul Brown
The recollections from that day in November 1963 are still very vivid in my mind, though it is hard to imagine fifty years have gone by. Kennedy, being Catholic, had been discussed in our home before the Dallas shooting, as early as during the 1960 presidential election campaign. My mother and father were young themselves in 1960, and this election would mark only their second presidential vote. John Kennedy visited Houston during his race for office in 1960, where we lived at the time, and we went to meet Kennedy at the Houston coliseum. I was six years old at that event, but was within ten feet of JFK.
The president was again a topic at our dinner table conversation in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My dad, in the Air Force Reserves at Ellington Air Force Base, was being called back into Active Service due to the possible hostilities. Kennedy was discussed as helping to solve the nuclear confrontation. Fast forward to November 22, 1963. Our family was living in Wichita Falls, Texas. The Catholic School that I attended, Our Lady Queen of Peace, was only a walk from our home in Fountain Park neighborhood. The principal, a nun, came over the school intercom system, with an announcement. “Our governor, John Connally, and our President, John Kennedy, have both been shot in Dallas. We must all pray and ask God to please keep them in prayers.”
Our classroom teacher began sobbing and went into the hallway, and minutes later Sister came back on the intercom, and dismissed the entire school. “Go home,” sister said. Those days you could leave school and walk home with no problems. It seems my mother had finished or was watching her favorite afternoon television show, ‘As the World Turns’, when I walked in. Dad had already phoned home to ask about the latest news heard. Television was non-stop on coverage of the events unfolding in Dallas, and we stayed glued to television to watch the coverage. Walter Cronkite stands out, Huntley and Brinkley, and several other newscasters that kept us in front of the events.
The shooting of Ruby in front of our eyes on television brought the reality of the event even closer. On the burial day of the President, our church had a mass to pray for the president’s family. Living in Texas, and often in Dallas ourselves, the location of the shooting was familiar to me and this brought the coverage and event closer to reality. Lyndon Johnson was vice president, and he was a familiar name known too. One of my buddy’s at schools Uncle worked for LBJ as an aide of some sort, in Washington DC, so my thoughts were about what would next happen to Texas with Johnson being from our state. Our family moved from Wichita Falls to Dallas later after the assassination, and the shooting location was visited and the memories of that day in 1963 stayed in my mind, as if yesterday.
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