Bristol, Connecticut

by Mo Saladin.

There are few things I remember clearer than at 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald killing President Kennedy in Dallas. The news came into my house via radio, but I was at school. No reason given. They dismissed class with the warning to go home. We were stunned, but happy to get out of school early, but when we did, we saw that there were teachers crying and a somber feeling permeated the air.

Someone, there is always someone, had a small portable radio, and we heard the words from a grave announcer… “they have shot President Kennedy.” No one knew what that meant. Was he dead? Was it another Wellesian hoax? We did not know those answers, but we all knew to go home and find out.

Within a few scant hours, everyone in the country, not probably the planet, knew that President John F. Kennedy, America’s youngest president ever, the first Roman Catholic, was dead. My mother was in pieces and I was rather stunned, well actually shell-shocked. News poured in that we should get to our basements and wait a Soviet Attack; my Mom was worried about my father and brother. I do not know how I felt now, probably just as lost as everyone else — it was surreal.

Meanwhile, in Dallas

From a window on the sixth floor of the depository building, Lee Harvey Oswald, using his mail-order rifle, allegedly fired three shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. John B. Connally in an open-car motorcade in Dealey Plaza.

Within six minutes, President Kennedy was dead, long before he reached Parkland Hospital, but it was not until 1:00 CST that the hospital made the announcement because he had a faint heart beat when he was being treated in the ER. Then he had a cardiac arrest, and he was gone.

Meanwhile, Oswald took a bus and then a taxi to his rooming house, departed, and when he was about a mile away from the Depository was stopped by Patrolman J.D. Tippit, who believed that Oswald resembled the suspect already being described over the police radio. Oswald killed Tippit with his mail-order revolver (1:15 PM CST).

At 1:30 PM CST November 23 Oswald was formally arraigned for the murder of President Kennedy. It is still debated whether or not he acted alone; some speculate that the Tippitt murder was a rouse because they knew each other but I am not sure what that means since Tippitt was a cop and it was his job to know everyone who worked in the downtown Dallas area. Still, there is a site that makes some strange connections between the two, just like their is a site for every madcap theory out there, including the fans of Jim Garrison, all waiting the Truth from full Warren Commission’s release.

Footnotes:

• Josiah Thompson’s Six Seconds in Dallas – A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination is a pedantic but authoritative view of why it was impossible there was a lone gunman. Dr. Thompson, he holds a Ph.D in Philosophy before becoming a private eye because he idolized Dashiell Hammett, lists every source, has photos from every angle and discusses the ballistics so thoroughly its either the greatest feast for Assassination junkies, or sheer overkill. It’s the best out there on the subject.

On a Personal Note

Suki and I discussed the project ending over the past summer and she recommended 500 which of course is far shy of Marc’s 1000, considering we only used about 200 of his 1000 nativities. At first I was stunned, but as the months grew closer to the end, it all worked out well as I’m leaving the Nickel City and moving to the Cape. I’m proud to have been part of this team and look forward to my next adventure — writing up Ruth Gerry’s Dynamic Aptitude using this and the full Jones database as examples. Happy New Year- Mo