Forty Five Years Ago

For those of who remember that day, it’s hard to believe it was forty-five years ago today. A young, vibrant, inspiring President who promised change (sound familiar) was gunned down in Dallas (hope that never happens to a President again).

Even though I was very young, I remember that Friday like it was yesterday. Today it took a Google search to find any media stories noting this sad anniversary. From my perspective as a fifty-something I can't believe it doesn’t get major coverage, especially on an anniversary ending in five (a number that usually garners memorial almost as much as zero-year anniversaries).



Maybe it is time to forget about John F. Kennedy’s assassination or to just relegate it to the history books and the Jeopardy home edition. If you’re at the leading edge of the baby boom, you were 17 years old that day and remember it well. If you’re a young Boomer, you were a baby and not even old enough to know there was something unusual about your parents crying in front of the television all weekend.

If you are Gen X or younger, the whole thing is something your parents talked about, sort of like my parents talked about the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. You know it is important, but it doesn’t really mean anything to you.

For me, November 22nd is right up there with September 11th as a significant day to remember.



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If you’re interested, here are some of today’s stories, memories or commentary:

- Dallas television station report

- Boston Herald column

- Newseum

Here’s an excerpt from the Newseum story which shows how different news coverage was in 1963:

Journalists didn’t have laptops, digital cameras or cell phones four decades ago. But using typewriters, film and land-line telephones, they reported every breaking development — from Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead, to Love Field, where Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president, to the Texas Theatre, where suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was captured.

Television networks carried nonstop, commercial-free coverage for nearly four days. Two days after the assassination, TV viewers who were tuned to NBC, the only network that carried live coverage of Oswald’s jail transfer, witnessed the first live murder on television when nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot the accused assassin at point-blank range. The following day, more than 93 percent of U.S. TV households watched Kennedy’s funeral.

- The Zapruder film of the actual assassination

And if you’re a TV news geek, watch these two videos. They are part of a series of videos showing uncut CBS television coverage that day as the story was developing. You’ll hear numerous references to “our CBS news correspondent Dan Rather” who was at the hospital but without live TV cameras.

- CBS News coverage segment part 6

- CBS News coverage segment part 7 (the famous scene where Walter Cronkite holds back tears as he reads the ‘official’ announcement of Kennedy’s death is near the end of this clip)