Juanita Salas was a sophomore at Robertson High School, immersed in her social studies class, when the principal got on the P.A. system to announce the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“Everybody was just shocked for awhile. They dismissed school right away,” said the retired teacher assistant with the Las Vegas City Schools. Like several others interviewed for this column, marking the 43rd anniversary of Kennedy’s death, Juanita has crystallized the events, “just as if it happened yesterday.”
As for me, in 1963 I was a newspaper reporter in another town. In previous columns I’ve mentioned how the shock and horror of having our president gunned down by an assassin’s bullet created a day I’ll certainly never forget. Things at the Gallup Independent, where I was employed, couldn’t have been more hectic than if the president’s motorcade had passed through our newspaper office.
The details were clear for Mary Tarango, who works as a secretary for attorney Michael Gregory. “I was in school at Paul D. Henry. When we heard about it, the teacher asked us to observe a moment of silent prayer, and then we got sent home early. I remember feeling sad because we all considered him a great president. But we were probably more shocked than hurt, and I kept asking, ‘Who could do such a thing?’”
Gerda Zimmerman came to the U.S. to study at the Martha Graham Contemporary Dance School in New York City. She had seen films of the legendary dancer, and as a young woman made the decision to emigrate from Germany.
Her take on the assassination altered her opinion of America. “I was on the street — on Broadway — when I heard about the assassination. There was much commotion on the street. I couldn’t believe that somebody had killed the president. People were very upset.” Zimmerman said that before the assassination, her conception of America was somewhat different, “more innocent.”
Another student at the time, Robert Ortiz, was an eighth-grader at Bernal when he heard the news. “All of us were very sad. They must have thought there was no point in continuing to hold class, so they sent us home,” said Ortiz, who recently retired as a woodwork instructor at Luna Vocational.
Mia Prieskorn, whose father Don Swanson owned and operated a laundry in Las Vegas decades ago, was working at yet another laundry, in Albuquerque, when she learned about the killing at Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. “Somebody came in who had heard the news on the radio. We ran and got a TV — from somewhere — and started watching it.”
Prieskorn said her first reaction was disbelief, “and then I was just horrified when it sank in.” She said she hadn’t been similarly affected until she watched the second plane crash into the Twin Towers in New York City, five years ago. “When I realized it was real, I just sat down and wept.”
To flesh out this column, I called dozens of numbers, mostly random, confident that anybody I spoke to, who was alive in 1963, would have a clear recollection of what he or she went through upon hearing the news.
One person, however, said she had no recollection at all of the event.
A high school student at the time, she said “events were just a blur.”
Finally, I had gotten in touch with the one person in the world unable to remember that day.
I prodded her: “Did you simply block it out?”
“No. I just can’t remember that day. But I was in Dallas later on and visited the site of Kennedy’s motorcade.”
“That’s great,” I said. “At last I’ve located someone who doesn’t remember anything about the assassination. That’ll really help the column.”
“Just don’t use my name,” she said.
And I have to honor her request.
Darn.
• • •
These are some of my reasons to be thankful today:
• I’m thankful there are midterm elections. Interesting how the word “bipartisanship” has suddenly come into vogue with the Democratic party takeover of both houses. Strange that bipartisanship never seemed to be an issue before the recent election.
• I’m thankful that the Fox network and its publishing company HarperCollins decided against a two-part TV interview and the publishing of a book by O.J. Simpson, a purportedly hypothetical “If I Did It.” In one of America’s most-celebrated trials, the former football star was acquitted of murdering his estranged wife and her companion but was successfully sued by the ex-wife’s family in a civil matter. His book was to be a denial of the killings, but, we are told, O.J. was to explain how he would have committed the crime, if he had in fact done it. The extra free time will allow O.J. to continue his search for the real killers. (Wink. Wink.)
• I’m thankful for the plan of Rep. Charles D. Rangel, D-N.Y., to urge Congress to reinstitute the draft. That would give members of congress an opportunity to send their own children off to war instead of leaving the privilege solely to those of less financial means.
• I’m thankful for efforts to ban smoking in public places. There are those who insist “there’s not one shred of evidence that second-hand smoke kills.” Some of my relatives — and possibly some of yours — have died of lung cancer without ever having smoked. The assertion that there’s no evidence that other people’s smoke is injurious must be of tremendous comfort to those who are buried because of it.