50 Years After Dallas: Memories of 11/22/63

50 years after dallas

Members of Prep’s faculty & staff remember november 22, 1963

50 years after dallas

In November 2013, as the nation prepared to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Ms. Mary Anne McElroy of Prep’s history department asked the adults of the Prep community who experienced those trying days in 1963 firsthand to share their recollections. The comments would be used to shape classroom discussions on Friday, November 22, giving students some invaluable perspective on a defining moment in history.

The accounts that follow were submitted in response to this request.

We have compiled them as an oral history of the Prep community’s recollections of this national tragedy.

I was in public school in New York City (Queens). The teacher was at the board doing

something. A student was looking out the window and noticed the school buses pulling up an hour early and announced it to the class. She did stop and look and as we all did and were very puzzled. This had never happened before. Soon thereafter the principal’s secretary walked in and whispered to the teacher who then started to cry.

They told us the President had been shot and killed and we were being dismissed. We should go immediately home. The room was so still you could hear every breath. I still tear up when I remember that day.

Another interesting thing was for the first (and only time) in my life, we received a special edition of the newspaper. My parents got the Long Island Press delivered every day and a special edition was sold on the streets and delivered to homes. Remember there was no Internet, only TV and radio. TV was broadcasting nonstop all the events from Dallas on tape and then live all day and all night.

Schools were closed until the end of the funeral. It was a sad time for the nation. – Ms. Ella Glazer, Computer Science Department

This is so important to me. I remember as if it were yesterday. The sadness was felt on every block that you passed.

We went to church. We watched the funeral at school. We saw Oswald shot right before our eyes.

It was surreal. I wrote my junior year term paper in 1974 on the killing of JFK. I believed, and still do, that there was a conspiracy to kill the President. Why else did Ruby shoot Oswald?

JFK was young and vibrant and we listened to him when he said: “Ask not ...”.

It was the beginning of the end of the age of innocence. Thankfully the Beatles lifted up our spirits just a few months after the killings.

But the killings didn’t stop. We watched Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy die, again right before our eyes.

– Ms. Terry LaBruno, Math Department

I was in Kindergarten at PS 29 in College Point, Queens. We were having a late

recess period, playing in the play yard. Mrs. Bruel, my teacher, ran out of the school crying and gathered us in our room. She told us that the President had been shot. She asked us to pray for him so we all knelt down beside our desks.

My best friend in the class was Jewish and he said a prayer in Hebrew that his Mother had taught him. About a half hour later we found out that the President had died. We were immediately dismissed. I remember walking home with older kids, holding hands, and my Mother was crying at home.

We had lived in Washington when I was younger and attended the same church, Holy Trinity, as the Kennedy family so my mother and father felt close to them. We watched TV for four days after that and I remember how scared I was when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. I watched it live.

– Ms. Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07,’16, Director of Marketing & Public Relations

I was eleven days shy of my birthday on November 22, 1963, an eighth-grader at Saint

Paul the Apostle in Irvington, NJ. I don’t remember exactly how we received the news that Friday afternoon – whether our principal made an announcement on the loudspeaker, or if we were told by Sister Mary Leonard, our teacher. But told we were: “President Kennedy has been shot.” We were sent home before the 3:00 dismissal time and I walked home with the usual group of friends.

I don’t remember a lot of crying among us, but we did wonder whether it was the Communists who did this horrible thing. The rest of that day and Saturday were a blur. My parents were upset, of course, and both the radio and television were on constantly. The President’s shooting and subsequent death dominated the tube and radio alike. Looking back, that media coverage was the precursor of the 24-7 news coverage of breaking events that are de rigeur today.

Clearer to me are the events of Sunday, November 24. My mother, a Registered Nurse, was at work. My father and my godfather were putting down a tile floor in my new bredroom upstairs, while I was watching television alone in our living room. I don’t remember where my little sister or my brother were; he was a baby, probably napping, and she was most likely outside playing. I watched the scene unfold in the basement of the Dallas courthouse, as Lee Harvey Oswald was brought in. There was a big crowd of newspeople with cameras, bulbs were flashing, questions were being shouted at Oswald, who looked not the least like what I imagined the killer of a President should look like.

All of a sudden a man approached Lee Harvey Oswald, a shot rang out and Oswald doubled over with a grimace. The television camera was positioned behind and to the side of the guy who was the shooter’s shooter, and everything happened so fast! I remember very clearly the look on Oswald’s face as he was shot – a mix of surprise and pain as he doubled over – and the look of satisfaction on the face of the man who shot him, Jack Ruby.

People started shouting and milling around, “He’s been shot, Oswald’s been shot!” I ran upstairs and told my father and

godfather the news. They came and stood in front of the television for a few minutes, watching. I don’t recall what they said to each other or to me, but to this day I have the very strong sense that both men considered Oswald’s killer a hero. I was upset and confused, because even though I saw it unfold, I couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. I never felt that same way again – that I couldn’t believe what my own eyes saw – until September 11, 2001, when I watched on television as the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

What resonates with me the most today about the death of JFK and how it affected my family is this: My father was not much of an intellectual, and he certainly wasn’t a reader. The only thing I ever saw him read was the sports section of the Newark Evening News – no other part of the paper, just the sports. To spend money on a book was foolishness. But, he actually did just that – he spent money on the memorial book that was published following Kennedy’s death and burial, called Four Days – do you know the one I’m talking about? It was a book with a white cover and a black-and-white photo of Jack and Jackie taken on that fateful trip.

That book was kept in the top drawer of the credenza in our living room, carefully wrapped in its waxed paper bag, so that no harm would befall it. We weren’t allowed to touch it without permission, which was stingily given.

My father bought a book. It was the only one he ever purchased in my lifetime, and I imagine in his as well.

– Ms. Jackie Supple, P’96,’01,’06, Registrar

I was teaching latin here at Saint Peter’s. It was my first year of teaching. I was about 24...we heard about it but did not

know the circumstances. At first I felt the obligation to continue to teach but realized this was not what to do. So I got a radio, and we in the class listened to the events.

I think I remember more the funeral. There were about nine young Jesuits and we were on the 5th floor [of the Jesuit residence, now Shalloe Hall] and we watched on TV the funeral. That made more of an impression. It was an event that glued us to the TV, as when Katrina hit, or Sandy, or the election of Pope Francis. TV was “the Media.”

– Fr. Tony Azzarto, S.J. Alumni Chaplain

I was in second grade on that November day. Our school had bomb drills regularly; we were taken out of the

classrooms and lined up in the halls, where glass was less likely to be breaking. Then we had to kneel, bend over, put our foreheads to our knees, and cover the head and back of neck with our arms. This drill was left over from the Bay of Pigs scare the year before.

That particular day, our class had been very good, and Mrs. C told us we would get to listen to a record. She went out of the room to get the record player, and when she came back after a long wait SHE WAS CRYING! And said we would not be listening to the record, we were to put our heads on our desk and not say a word.

Teachers all stood in the hall and whispered. Then we were taken out for a bomb drill, which lasted an extremely long time. Finally we were dismissed, and told to go straight home (everyone walked to school back then). As a final reason for us to behave and get home fast she finally offered up this clue: the President has been shot.

Well, we certainly ran all the way home. The behavior of the teachers was beyond strange. When I got home, there was my mother and a neighbor mom and they’d been crying too!

Nontheless I shouted out my news, “Mommy the President is shot!

Mrs. C was crying, is that why you are crying?... a pause, then, “What’s a President? Why is bad that he is getting a shot?”

– Ms. Elizabeth Benedict, Learning Specialist

I was a sophomore at Prep the day President Kennedy was shot. There are

so many images of that day for me and they will always be linked to Prep. All of my classes were in the Humanities Building (it was then called the Freshman Building). That day I was sitting with my class in our second floor classroom in the afternoon waiting for our teacher, Fr. Stroud, to show. In those days the students did not move from class to class, the teachers moved. The lay teachers also wore flowing black gowns to class, except for the math and science teachers who wore white lab coats. The Jesuit priests usually wore black cassocks to class and Fr. Stroud was no exception.

Fr. Stroud was a very solemn teacher and very tough in the classroom. We never saw a lighter side to him and he was very tough to deal with in class. Years later I found out he actually was a nice guy and told jokes, and played golf.

Class started normally but then Father was interrupted by a message over the loud speaker asking teachers to send their Beadles to the Principals Office to pick up an announcement. The Beadle was a student who was asked to help with the administrative work of attendance and running to the Principals Office for special occasions. Asking Beadles to come down was a normal event but this was not going to be a normal “package”. When the Beadle returned, he handed the stapled message to Fr. Stroud. He opened it up and he turned very quiet and he looked down for what seemed to be a very long time. In retrospect he was probably trying to think of a way to tell 30 fifteen year olds that the President of the United States had just been shot.

He quietly stood up and announced …

“Gentlemen, I have very sad news. President Kennedy has just been shot and that is all the information I have at this time.” He then asked the entire class to stand as he led us in several prayers. We did not find out during that class whether the President was dead or not and my recollection was

that it took some time for that information to come forward.

President Kennedy was very special to 15 year old boys as he was closer to our age than the “other” Presidents, especially being born when Truman was President and followed by an elderly Eisenhower. President Kennedy was on TV , was young, had a beautiful wife, and a young child. He also had a great story of how he was destined to become President after his brother died in the war. It was always thought his brother, Joseph, was the one to become President.

President Kennedy spoke to the younger generation. He founded the Peace Corps. He set a goal to reach for the moon before the Russians, a thought-to-be-impossible task. Only a year earlier he guided us through the Cuban Missile crisis. At that time I was a freshman and we were practicing where to go in Prep in case there was a nuclear attack. That was a scary time and he became our leader.

He made everyone believe we could be the world leaders in technology. Prep completely changed its math curriculum immediately after Sputnik landed.

Our books were not even bound as they were being produced with Accelerated Math.

He was a true leader. He was going to be immortal and be my President forever.

– Mr. James Hollywood, ’66, Math Department

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