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49 years ago today ...

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by old_tony, Nov 22, 2012.

  1. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    I went there as a teenager (and a student of the assassination) and I was taken back by how "compact" Dealey Plaza really is. After years of seeing photos and footage, it appeared much smaller than I had envisioned.
     
  2. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    How so? What is your perspective after being there?
     
  3. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    Many years ago when I covered the NBA, most teams and writers stayed at the Reunion Hyatt right next to Reunion Arena. On the third floor of the hotel is an outdoor sports deck with some basketball hoops, tennis courts and a running track. I was taking an evening run around the track and came around a corner and was nearly knocked off my feet.

    The hotel location is across the railroad tracks from Dealey Plaza. In other words, the line of sight would have been looking almost straight at the limo from the front as Kennedy was shot. You were almost in a perfect line from the limo coming down Elm Street and the window the shots came from. I'd seen so many pictures from approximately that angle in reading about the assassination, and when I came around that corner, I'm not kidding when I say I nearly stopped dead in my tracks.

    I made it a point the next morning to walk the Plaza and then went to The Sixth Floor Museum. Just so haunting.
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    I was in kindergarten that day. I had just walked to school a half block away maybe a half hour earlier.

    My mother came into the classroom and took me home. I remember she said something to the teacher, who said, "oh my god" as my mother hustled me out of the door.

    We got home and the teevee coverage was on nonstop. We were home a half hour or so before Cronkite announced JFK was dead. My mother really broke down.

    I knew who Kennedy was. He was a near-god in our household. In an Irish Catholic family that was pretty much automatic.

    My dad was a news editor at the local paper and every day he came home for lunch with the lunchtime edition, and he and my mom would talk it over. I had learned to read at about age 3 so I'd be sitting there asking questions too. So yeah, I knew Kennedy was the man in charge of the country.

    My dad had a slight resemblance to him -- tall, thick, dark, reddish brown hair. Between him, Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke and Kennedy, I thought the whole nation had father figures who looked almost exactly alike.
     
  5. waterytart

    waterytart Active Member

    I was in fourth grade. Fifth- and sixth-graders had TVs in their classrooms. I heard a couple of older kids talking about it as we left school. (Looking back, I can't believe there was no announcement over the intercom.)

    My mother picked me up. She hadn't had the TV on at home or the radio in the car, and refused to believe me. Wouldn't turn on the radio. "You're just turning something you misheard into an unnecessary story."

    She capitulated to turning on the TV when we got home.
     
  6. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. I was in third grade living outside Houston at the time. Several kids from my class had been to the old airport (now Hobby) to see Kennedy the day before, and they were all excited about it.

    After it happened, the school waited until after it was confirmed he was dead then made an announcement. At first, the news was that both Kennedy and the governor were killed.

    One thing that always stuck with me was that before class was dismissed for the day the teacher made it a point to teach us what the word assassination meant. First time I'd ever heard it.
     
  7. Colton

    Colton Active Member

    Still difficult to fathom how the lid on this murder/conspiracy has never been blown off.
    I know they can attempt to explain away the horseshit magic bullet theory through experiment after experiment, blah blah blah. Anyone who has ever fired a bullet and seen it after it's gone through a deer, etc. knows what BS it all is.
    Bottom line, though, to me is this -- the single most important bullet in history "somehow" turns up on a stretcher??? After going through two bodies, shattering bones, it just "falls out" of the governor and all but pristine, at that?
    May those who conspired, along with those who covered it up, burn in eternal hell.
     
  8. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Hopefully your dad was of better moral character than what we all learned about Kennedy after his death.
     
  9. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    I dunno. My mom in her college years, when she was taking 'glamor shots,' looked a little bit like Jackie.
     
  10. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    That's fine. But was there ever buxom blonde hanging around, maybe singing happy irthday?
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Other than Auntie Norma Jean, no. But I never knew her at all.
     
  12. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    If Oswalt pulled that shot off by himself, which I highly doubt, he was a dumb SOB for choosing the worst possible location to do the shot.

    [​IMG]
     
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