My Interest in the Kennedy Assassination
I was nine years old on Friday, November 22, 1963. I was in class with my chums at the local elementary school when our winded and red-faced principal rushed in and pulled the teacher aside. When he whispered in her ear, she turned ashen. What had happened? The principal hurried out, and soon returned with a huge, clunky TV and awkwardly rolled it to the front of the class. By the time the TV was on and the antenna properly adjusted, Walter Cronkite had just announced that JFK died in Dallas from an assassin’s bullet. Our teacher huddled outside the classroom with the principal and other teachers—many of whom were openly crying. The sight of teachers crying was a shock to elementary school kids. The school’s parking lot and the curb along the street were filling up with distraught parents arriving to pick up their confused and frightened children. My parents both were at work (they ran our family business), but the school was close to home so I quickly made my way there and turned on the TV. I’ve always been a news junky—even at age nine.
Not long after, my dad arrived and I was completely taken aback by his reaction. The Riddlebargers did not like, nor support the Kennedys. The Kennedys were Roman Catholic and democrats. My dad had a comedy record mocking Jackie Kennedy’s famous 1961 tour of the White House—he played it frequently and laughed uproariously. I didn’t know what to expect since the President was usually the object of criticism and scorn in our house. How would my dad feel about all of this? He had been an FBI agent during World War Two, and was a Nixon fan, more so after Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to JFK. Nixon was a local boy and very supportive of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
My dad was very calm and stoic by nature, but when he came through the door, he too was red-faced and alarmed by what had happened. He was appalled that JFK’s security had failed. He worried about foreign involvement and the possibility that this might lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. To my surprise, I noticed his eyes welling up with tears as he blurted out, “no one has the right to take the life of our president.” And so the Riddlebargers grieved JFK’s death like most Americans. The TV was on constantly that weekend and we watched it all unfold in real time. I had not seen my parents react like this before—with such sadness and concern for the Kennedy family. That made a huge impression on me. This was a national and not a partisan trauma.
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