Ding, ding, ding, ding, the bells were ringing. A United Press International newswire teletype machine in the FM radio station at Lew Wallace High School in Gary clanged as it keyed out the newsflash bulletin on yellow paper that grave day, November 22, 1963.
(Dateline Dallas) – The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, has been shot!
It was a Friday afternoon, and outside the broadcast facility's windows, a smudged sky of gray-to-steely-blue clouds hung like curtains over skeletal, leafless trees. The grass was the color of dirty straw, already retreating into winter after a hard frost. Swatches of grainy snow skittered across sidewalks, driven by a disagreeable north wind off Lake Michigan. It was a dreary day in so many ways.
About 30 minutes later, the grim exigency notice, accompanied by five more sets of bells, typed out the despairing message: President Kennedy is dead!
I was a junior at Lew Wallace, working at our FM radio station during lunch. With no other students in the studio, I was the first in the building to learn of our president's assassination and the end of Camelot.
Three rifle shots from a 6.5x52mm Italian Carcano Model 38 bolt-action carbine were fired in less than 10 seconds from a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. The first struck the president in the back of the neck, below the skull. Traveling at 1,904 feet per second, it tore through the trachea. The round exited his body through the knot of his blue tie, bruising the right lung and striking no bones. His heart was still functioning.
Kennedy remains upright in the Lincoln limousine’s backseat. Had he fallen forward after the first shot, he might have lived. His bulky back brace keeps him erect. Extra Ace bandages, wrapped over the brace, add rigidity. The next bullet, fired less than five seconds later, would have passed above his head if not for the brace holding him upright. The round exploded the top of his skull. The 35th President of the United States is dead.
The president's body lay in repose at the White House and later at the Capitol over the weekend. More than 250,000 people stood in line on Sunday, forming a 40-block-long line in near-freezing temperatures, waiting up to 10 hours to enter the rotunda. They paid their respects to the fallen Commander in Chief throughout the night.
A Requiem Mass was held on Monday at St. Matthew's Cathedral. After the ceremony, the mahogany funerary coffin was loaded onto a horse-drawn caisson in front of the church—six gray horses, accompanied by a riderless black horse, were prepared to travel to Arlington National Cemetery for interment.
And then there it was, that indelible image, worth a million words, weighing heavily on our hearts. Three-year-old John Kennedy Jr. stood on the cathedral steps, in front of his mom, John-John saluting his father's flag-draped casket as it pulled away from the church. A picture no one will ever forget.
Years later, on winter nights, driving home from work on Capitol Hill, I would round the Lincoln Memorial circle and cross Memorial Bridge, heading straight toward Arlington Cemetery. Directly ahead, on the gently sloping hillside, I could see the Kennedy Eternal Flame. It burns at the center of a five-foot circular slab of Cape Cod granite, coiling, curling and looping toward the heavens.
Occasionally, I find myself recalling this indelible “Once upon a time story,” as images from my memory unwind and the music from Camelot that JFK treasured plays in my mind… "Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." And I evoke that leaden November day in 1963, the day of sadness and sorrow, the day when the bells were ringing.
Jerry Wilkerson is a former press secretary for two members of Congress, a former CBS Chicago WBBM NewsRadio correspondent, and a Chicago Daily News correspondent. He is a retired police commissioner and Navy veteran who lives in SaddleBrooke. Email him at franchise@att.net.
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