Monday, November 22, 2010

Where were you 47 years ago today? If you were alive then, you probably remember.

This is one of those days when my mind drifts back to experiences of long ago.
Today – Nov. 22 – is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I was a freshman at what was then Indiana State College (now Indiana State University) and I’d just had lunch in the Gillum-Sandison Hall dining room when I walked into the Gillum lounge and found a crowd of guys glued to the black-and-white TV. I was a Kennedy Democrat at the time and thought of JFK as my president. So the news of his death was like a body blow.
I ended up driving to Washington, D.C. with five other students. We drove all night and crashed at the University of Maryland Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity house. Reed McCormick, whose parents’ car we used, was an ATO active and I was an ATO pledge at the time. We stood in a chilly line all night to file past the casket in the Capitol Rotunda and stood along the funeral procession route the next morning. We were back on the road when we learned Jack Ruby had gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald.
It was a surreal experience. I had a cheap little box camera with me and got a few shots of the funeral procession, including the caisson and the horse Black Jack, with the boots backward in the stirrups.
That's me on the left, then Reed McCormick and then Steve Dolbow.

1 comment:

Rees said...

I am only 41, so I do not have this bit of history to lay claim to--but I do have Sept 11. I guess in a few years time, I also will be able to look at a younger generation and say "do you remember where you were on that fateful day?" Impressive pics--they sent a bit of a shiver up my spine.