August 17, 2005 – The Day President Kennedy was Assassinated

August 17, 2005 – The Day President Kennedy was Assassinated

Friday, November 22, 1963 began like any other day on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was a school day for me and I awoke to the sound of reveille in my barracks. I hauled myself out of bed, grabbed my overnight case from my locker and headed for the head to confront a line of mirrors over a sink that wasn’t already occupied by early risers who got a jump on the rest of us. A shave, tooth brushing, and face washing followed by a quick comb through my short regulation Navy haircut and I was ready to jump into my dress blues and head for the mess hall for breakfast before rushing off to my first class in the morning.

I had befriended a sailor, Manny (not his real name) from my home town of El Paso—he had attended El Paso High School, a rival of Austin High School, where I had gone for the first three of my high school years. Manny had begun to teach me the art of Korean Karate and I had the bruises to attest to my tutorial. He and I headed off to the mess hall together discussing some point of an exercise we had gone over the night before. Manny was a perfectionist when it came to martial arts. I suspect it was motivated by having to fight a lot during high school, a fact that belied his almost gentle manner—I didn’t think it was his nature to be a warrior but he had learned that when life pushed you, you had to push back. Beyond teaching me the art of applying lethal force in self-defense, Manny continually intellectualized the whole activity, making a case for beauty in the use of force for a noble end. Like the great predators, men were by nature aggressive and violent, but as thinking beings it was imperative to channel that nature to worthy battles.

Manny was also big into bodybuilding. He and I had about the same build, 5 feet, seven inches tall, 130 lbs when we first met in late September. Over the past two months, he had put on an additional 30 lbs, lifting weights and bulking up ingesting large amount of carbohydrates. He would work out then hit the mess hall where he would eat a half a loaf of bread and butter before diving into his dinner. He would explain that the work out had broken down all these muscle cells in his body and the flood of food would be rebuilding them overnight. He used the weights to sculpt his body and the Karate to make those same muscles have more purpose than simply looking good. The reality was that we were part of a military organization whose purpose was to bring force to bear in the service of the United States. Being trained as a radio technician, it was easy to loose sight of what I would be doing once I put to sea on a fighting ship.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the U.S. and my Commander-in-Chief, had arisen well before us in his suite at the Texas Hotel in Ft. Worth, Texas and left the hotel room without his wife and greeted well wishers in a nearby parking lot before joining her for breakfast with the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. As Manny and I were into the second hour of our class, the Kennedy’s and the Johnson’s were flying from Ft. Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base to Dallas Love Field, bordered by Mockingbird Lane on the southeast, by Loop 12 on the northwest, by Lemmon Avenue on the northeast and Denton Drive on the southwest. The President’s motorcade left Love Field turning left on Mockingbird Lane then right and traveling down Lemmon Avenue jogging right onto Turtle Creek Blvd, jogging left onto North Harwood Street, and making a right onto Main Street. When Main approached Houston Street, the motorcade turned right on Houston Street and left on Elm Street heading west toward its rendezvous with Lee Harvey Oswald.

At 10:30 AM Pacific Standard Time, 12:30 PM Central Standard Time, the path of the 35th President of the United States crossed that of Lee Harvey Oswald and in an instant, the President was shot dead. It didn’t take long for the news to spread from Dallas—not the instantaneous response we’ve come to expect from CNN, but within an hour of the terrible deed, the AP, UPI, and other news services were broadcasting the terrible news. We found out as we broke for lunch and made our way to the mess hall on Treasure Island, where everyone working there was already talking about what had happened. The mess hall was one of the places on base where radios played continuously in the galley. The atmosphere inside the mess hall was electric with the fight or flight instinct that animals get when they are confronted with a threat. When the Commander in Chief is attacked, what does that mean to the rank and file military?

It took a good half hour for the initial shock to wear off. Manny and I moved through the serving line listening to the sailor serving us answer a barrage of questions. As soon as one question was answered another one would take its place. Who did the shooting? Was the President dead? Had the military been put on alert… We were asking and getting answers for unprecedented questions from word-of-mouth sources inside the base mess hall. The rest of Friday and the weekend were shrouded in an oppressive gloom that hung over everyone civilian and military alike. I remember little of that time other than the sense of loss I felt. The television news broadcasters finally began to tell a coherent story about the events earlier in the day. We knew that the President had been shot by a lone gunman name Lee Harvey Oswald, that the military had not been put on alert, that we had a new president, and that the nation was going to mourn its fallen leader. Wednesday of the following week, November 26th the President was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and then it was over. School and our normal lives resumed. Manny and I began our Karate practice sessions again and we both started preparing for a major exam at school.