On November 22, 1963, I was in college music appreciation class listening to “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” I saw a few people huddled around a radio and went over the ask what was going on. The president’s been shot in Dallas, they told me. No word on his condition.
I worked for a newspaper in the afternoons and evenings and wasn’t due at the paper for hours, but I knew it was going to be a madhouse there, so I left school and grabbed the subway—a 30-minute ride. I looked around and saw people chatting or sitting quietly as always, and I remember thinking that I was the only person in that crowded car who knew what had happened.
When I got to the paper, it was bedlam. Reporters, editors, columnists and every department—local news, national news, world news, sports, culture—were focusing on the event. Some people were crying, most were going about their jobs with a vengeance I’d never seen.
An hour or so after I arrived, I heard a series of loud “dings” coming from the teletype room. Yes, no iPhones, no computers, no Internet—just Associated Press and United Press teletype machines. I was a copyboy and I knew the dings signaled something urgent. I ran to the room where a dozen machines were clattering away and ripped a length of yellowish paper that was emerging from the machine. I read the headline. KENNEDY DEAD IN DALLAS.
I won’t even try to tell you how I, a native of a small city 32 miles from Dallas, a Democrat and a worshiper of JFK, felt at that moment.
The next seven or eight hours were hellish.