Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)
“Yes, I’ll sit with you and talk, let your eyes relive again
I know my vintage prayers would be very much the same”*-
“Sixty Years On,” by Elton John & Bernie Taupin
November 22nd, 1963. It’s a day that probably doesn’t mean much to many who weren’t born yet. But, if you were living on that day, I think it’s a day none of us have forgotten.
I remember it all, from a safe distance of 1,370, or so, miles away as the owl majestically flies from Dallas, TX to NYC. As it turned out, it wasn’t a safe distance at all. As horrific as all the events of the weekend of Friday November 22nd, through 24th, 1963 were. It included watching a man being killed for the first time in my life. John F. Kennedy being assassinated is an event that, 60 years ago today as I write, just hasn’t gone away. I’m not talking about the who-done-the horrible deed, the endless conspiracy theories, or the circus surrounding the events. I’m talking about something much, much bigger that rarely gets mentioned, lost in all the other talk that, frankly, just doesn’t matter any more. If Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill JFK, whoever did is most likely dead by now as is anyone he might have been involved with.
He, or they, are no longer the point. What matters now is what’s happened to everyone else.
Cornell Capa (Robert’s brother), JFK During a campaign event, NYC, USA, October 19, 1960. Click any photo for full size.
Set the way, way back machine to the beginning… I remember when JFK ran for President in 1960. He was so very well-spoken and it sure sounded like it came from the heart. Then there was his incredible feat of saving his crew after the PT boat he was commanding in the Pacific during World War II was hit and sunk. I came to admire him.
From Four Days by the UPI & American Heritage Magazine
Fast forward to Friday, November 22nd, 1963. There I was in the school nurse’s office, due to after-effects of a bad accident I suffered a few months before when I was hit in the head by a baseball bat. Accidentally, I hope. I was out cold before my face hit the concrete. No one came to help me for about 40 minutes as I lay unconscious. I finally got up and staggered home. I was out of school for a month, and still having problems with the cuts healing, etc. At 12:30pm, as I sat there waiting her attention, I heard the radio report coming over the speaker above me: JFK had been shot in his motorcade in Dallas.
There are other, more graphic shots of this, but this grainy still from a Film speaks to me much more. Jackie was the first one to feel our pain. Though none of us could imagine her’s. She would be an incredible model of class & strength from this moment on. *-UPI Newsfilm image from Four Days.
What???????
There really are just no words for the feeling I had. It was completely unfathomable.
I can still hear that radio report…
Even for a little kid- everything stopped. People just looked at each other with their mouths open, unable to speak.
A short while later they announced he was dead.
The New York Times, November 23, 1963
To say it was beyond belief is cliche, but true. It was beyond anything anyone could imagine. I had never experienced anything like this. It was something I had never even considered- that a man in such a position could be killed, outside of war.
My copy of Four Days, the 1964 “historical record,” as it says, published by the UPI and American Heritage Magazine. Copies trade on eBay today for about $3.
I don’t remember getting home, but I do remember that everyone was glued to their TV when I did from then on, and continually, for the better part of four days: Friday through Monday, when JFK was buried. It became the title of the book American Heritage Magazine & the UPI published later as a, mostly, visual record. There he sits in the cover Photo taken mere minutes before the tragedy, in the prime of life, in a Photo that, unbeknownst to everyone at the time, marked the end of the world as we knew it. Meanwhile, back in the moment, everyone & everything in the country stopped to watch and to mourn. As the day wore on, nothing changed that initial feeling of utter disbelief.
SIXTY YEARS later (I shook my head in amazement as I typed that) it still feels unreal.
From Four Days
I watched all the rest of it unfold live. Most memorably, Sunday, November 24th.
From Four Days
After lying in state at the White House on Saturday, on Sunday, a long procession and ceremonies took his body to the Capitol in a strangely stark light, as the pictures above show. At least it appeared that way on black & white televisions and how it is burned into my memory. It was like an other-worldly and very powerful spotlight was being focused on the procession. Then, a little after 11am, as I was sitting in my living room, watching TV with my mom, who was in and out of the room, Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s accused assassin, was brought down to the basement garage under the police station by Dallas Police for transfer to a larger prison. All of a sudden, on live TV, a man lurched out from the right and shot him in the mid-section!!! A short time later, Oswald, too, was dead.
Oswald is shot by Ruby as I watched on live TV. *-UPI Newsfilm image from Four Days.
It was the first murder ever broadcast on live television.
As a little kid watching this happen in front of him, it was just one more thing on the pile of unbelievable things that had gone on the past 3 days. Somehow, it didn’t register as a separate event, as horrific as it was. I wonder about that now. My mom didn’t say a word.
At that point, in late November, 1963, I was, already, no stranger to fear. A few years earlier, we were pushed to the brink of the unthinkable- nuclear war- during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Adults figured Washington D.C. and NYC would be the first targets of missiles fired from Cuba or submarine. People were glued to radios and TVs then to learn of the latest developments until tensions finally lessened after what felt like forever. It was, perhaps, the peak moment of terror in the entire Cold War which was raging in full effect during my childhood and beyond.
Students being taught to hide under their desks in the event of an atomic explosion nearby(!) *-Still from Duck & Cover.
In “response,” I was among the millions of kids being taught to “Duck and Cover” under our desks at school to “prepare” for a nuclear bomb going off in the vicinity- at any time! We were also taught where the Fallout Shelters were. There was no mention during either of these instructions about meeting up with our families. I didn’t think about that at the time I was under my desk, staring at the floor. Can you imagine what the “fallout” would be if this worthless nonsense was taught to little kids today?
A vintage Fallout Shelter sign. I had to shoot it with the flash because the sign is so old and rusted only the reflective paint has held up. I didn’t bother to ask if there was still a fallout shelter there. Hopefully, I won’t need to find out. West 18th Street, November 27, 2023.
All of a sudden, my quiet childhood had been turned upside down by the insanity of world politics.
Out of everything that happened during those years, did JFK being murdered have the biggest effect on the country and the world?
His death effected my life in the way few presidents have either during their lives or after their deaths, in countless ways I couldn’t imagine as a little kid in November, 1963. (None of this is said politically. One of the casualties of November 22nd was my permanent loss of interest in politics.) For instance- Some years later, I was in the Vietnam Draft Lottery. Luckily, my birthdate came up too high and I wasn’t called. If I had been called, there is no doubt in my mind, with what I know now, that my name would be with the other casualties up on that wall in Washington instead of writing about the following 60 years here.
It’s possible JFK might have gotten us out of it before my number came up, but, we’ll never know. Luckily, November 22nd, 1963 didn’t indirectly cost me my life as collateral fallout, but that fallout has covered the world in countless ways- if you look for it. It turns out there is no such thing as being a “safe distance” from the events of that day. I’ve often thought the country has never been the same since November 22nd, 1963. I’ve heard a number of others say that, too. But, that’s hard to quantify. It’s something no one who was born after can really understand. The world would have been different had John F. Kennedy lived, but we’ll never know how. We’ll also never know if “different” would have been “better.”
JFK never got to grow old in his beloved rocking chair. I wonder what he would have made of the country & the world as he did. Bruce Catton writes, ironically, “The future sets us free. It is our escape hatch.” From Four Days.
On the 60th Anniversary of his death, that’s what I think about. Not the distracting noise about bullet theories. I think about the world those bullets fired sixty years ago today have given us, and how JFK’s death has effected me and everyone, whether we know how, or not. And, how it continues to.
If all of its ramifications could possibly be tallied, World War II is possibly the most significant event of the previous generation. If ALL of their ramifications could possibly be tallied, it feels to me that (through the year 2000) the JFK Assassination and the Moon Landing, which he committed the nation to achieving before the end of the 1960s, were the two most significant events of my generation.
*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Sixty Years On,” by Elton John & Bernie Taupin from Elton John, his classic 1970 debut album, performed above Live at the Royal Opera House in 2002.
Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.