Nov 23, 2013

JFK - 50 Years After His Death



"ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."


Classmates:

It may be hard to believe, but President JFK was killed 50 years ago this week - on another Friday. For most of us, this was the probably the most significant public event of our generation.

Please share your thoughts:

1) where you were at the time you heard?
2) your initial reactions?
3) your activities that weekend?
4 what do you think really happened?

Bill Kamenjarin
Sutherland 1/63
MP 1/67

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           morganparkhigh@gmail.com and we will add them to this post.
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I had just left a class on the third floor and was heading down the stairway on the southeast side of the building. just before I reached the landing someone passed me going up and I heard something about a shooting and the President. By the time I reached my locker on the second floor the halls were abuzz with the news. I went to lunch with my usual bunch (can't remember who) as we got to the corner across from the post office a group of girls passed. One of the girls, Donna Deam, pointed a finger at her head and said "He got shot in the head". We tried to get news from some of the stores and got the same stories. We ate our lunch on a park bench on Prospect Park as usual. Got back to school and went to study hall in the auditorium where they announced JFK was dead. Went to the football game on Saturday, which sucked all around. Sunday I was in church when Oswald was shot. Monday a group of friends were in Ron Brunton's basement watching the funeral while we shot pool.

What really happened? Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from the School Book Depository.

Jim Dart '66
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If one is around tragedy long enough, one of the number of gut reactions people have to the news is laughter. It is not that they are happy. It is not voluntary. It is a coping mechanism to release almost unbearable tension.

MC Hunt
__________

I was a senior about to graduate in January, standing at my locker in the tunnel leading to the Little Gym, and was stunned by the news.

Nona Reinhold Kempton

Barnard 1/60
MP 1/64
___

I was in Doc Watson's Chemistry class. Rumors had been flying but Doc came in and confirmed it. Very sad and somber moment. Initial reaction was shock and disbelief. Then I wondered if this was the opening salvo of WW III from the good old Soviet Union. As I walked home late from basketball practice I envisioned the ICBM's hitting Chicago.

I don't remember the weekend activities. It must have been discussed in church but I don't remember.

I think the Warren Commission probably had it right but it is certainly possible that other theories are true. Oswald was a loose cannon who met with the Soviets and Cuban Communists. They could have easily persuaded him it was a good idea to kill the President. 


It is possible but unlikely that the mob set it up. I never bought that Ruby shot him to cover it up for the mob - he must have known he would get life in prison - why would he do that? And I think if there had been a conspiracy someone would have talked by now and made big money. Ruby himself was a big talker - not the kind of guy the mob would choose for a public hit and then trust him to keep his mouth shut for the rest of his life.

The Warren Commission was a top blue ribbon commission who would not have lied about this. Jerry Ford, Earl Warren and numerous other leading citizens. They would not have covered it up - why would they? To protect the mob, and or the CIA, and or the Communists?

I did hear a brief once from Gunny Hathcock, the famous Marine sniper from Vietnam. He said that he could not have made the shots that Oswald made to kill Kennedy with the old rifle that he used. So who knows? But he could have made a lucky shot. It seems like someone would have seen or heard other shots.

Interestingly Oswald was a Marine with the same military occupation specialty that I had. He was a screw up. Lots of interesting info about him and Jack Ruby below. It is hard to imagine any country or organization entrusting anything important to these two murderous mopes.

___

I was outside Mr. Moore’s office waiting for a meeting re: either a student counsel deal or something. Thinking about my birthday party coming up on the following Saturday and taking my drivers test ASAP.

Within a matter of minutes I went from being on a high to down in the dumps. Mr. Moore came out and told me the meeting was canceled and JFK had be shot. A lesson in life on how fast things can change…

Ray Justinic Jan 66  


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I remember being in the lunch room with a bunch of, basically, young Republicans. We were more worried about the state of the country under LBJ than anything. We all felt a bit betrayed by the assassination of a head of the United States.
Tom Schildhouse
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November 22, 1963 - I was in English class at Clissold when our teacher (I've forgotten her name) informed us of the tragic news. Some jerk was making wise-assed remarks about it and I remember being really upset about it. We were released early that day and did not come back to school until Tuesday, as we were given Monday off when JFK was laid to rest. There was no TV that weekend except for assassination coverage from 1:00 PM Friday until about 6:00 PM Monday and consequently, the way the news is covered and presented changed forever that weekend. I remember being glued to the TV set and watching the news as it happened; like Oswald being killed on live TV. My parents talked about what might happen internationally, some of which scared me and some of which I didn't understand.

In 1966, I started reading stuff about the JFK Assassination and the Warren Commission's decision on what happened on 11-22-1963 and have read many, many books and articles as well as viewing just about every documentary on the subject since then. In my opinion, the Warren Commission did not do a good job in their investigation; some say deliberately and some say it was just pushed through so fast that it didn't have a chance to do a thorough job; they omitted a lot of evidence and refused to accept evidence. Maybe they had an agenda they had to fulfill. Plus, they were hampered by the CIA and FBI, who refused to produce evidence under the terms of 'national security' - more like CYA.

I happen to believe that Oswald was a fall-guy for a small close-knit conspiracy of perhaps Mafia guys and maybe a couple of rogue government types. I don't know for sure, but everything I have read leads in that direction. Nobody is going to convince me that Jack Ruby, a hardened criminal, gun runner, narcotics trafficker and strip club owner was so overcome with grief and in order to spare Jackie Kennedy the pain of coming back to Dallas for a trial - took it upon himself to kill Oswald. I think that Ruby was ordered to kill Oswald, as Oswald was supposed to have been taken out either at the assassination scene or by Dallas Police Officer J,D. Tippett, who Oswald actually killed in self-defense. There is evidence that Oswald and Ruby knew each other and had been seen together at Ruby's Strip Club a few days before Nov. 22nd......but, because these witnesses were strippers and/or prostitutes, their credibility and reliability was not taken seriously by the Warren Commission. I could write a book on all the evidence that was ignored, misinterpreted and manufactured - who knows, maybe I will.

I'm afraid we'll never get the "rest of the story" version of the JFK Assassination, as most of the people involved are dead and missing evidence is gone forever; now, there's only conjecture and opinion. And, it is fun to think about what would have happened had JFK not been murdered and was around to be re-elected in 1964. What would have happened in Viet Nam? What would the 60's have been like? Would Nixon even have been elected in 1968? Would Bobby Kennedy have been assassinated? Interesting stuff.

One thing is for sure, because of my research into the JKF Assassination, I learned to appreciate him a lot more and realized that he did have a vision for a better America and that 'somebody' cheated us from realizing that vision. Too darned bad.



Dennis Carlson, class of '67

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Very interesting narrative, Dennis, and while I am not so well read on the subject as you obviously are, I in no way believe that the whole thing was not a planned happening by more than one person of the high end politics of our country, including J. Edgar Hoover. Oswald was just a tool and obviously a "simple tool" at that, but then that's how it has been for time immemorial, hasn't it? And, if the people responsible for this heinous act were indeed people in "high places", shall we say, they most assuredly had the power to cover their tracks, ya' think???? Look at how it is in the justice system today. A stupid kid caught with street drugs gets sent to jail, but a rich or politically powerful person gets a fine and a slap on the wrist. Will there EVER be any true justice in this world????

I personally was in Mr. Holzhall's Early World History class out in one of the portable buildings when a note was brought into him by a girl apparently doing "service" for the office at the time. He read the note and then parked himself on the front of his desk, one foot on the floor and one hip on the desk, and read the note to the class. Needless to say, there were gasps all over the room, and then the tears began to flow.   I wonder where Mr. Holzhall is today?

Seize the day, my friends, because we are definitely not getting any younger!

Joan P. '66


___


Well said Dennis, there's much more to it than just Oswald. However if Kennedy had not been shot he would've been taken down in the second term for all his shenanigans with other women including Marilyn Monroe. So history is rewritten and we are all the better for it and surviving for 65 years plus or minus.

Tony Visser
Sutherland. 1/63


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Write that book, Dennis! I'd buy it.......actually I'd expect you to give me an autographed copy for free. BUT, if I had to buy it I would.....probably. You've definitely done your homework old buddy.

Dart

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Bill K - Hey bro - I was in English with my division teacher Mrs. Salla in room 304? 204? Oh well, the place went bonkers as they sent school runners around to each classroom. Seniors I would assume. 

Brian Clifford
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1) In Mrs. Helen Corcoran's French 3 class. 

2) Sad because she was crying. 
3) Watched wall to wall tv coverage. 
4) Conspiracy with mob.

David Estes
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My initial reaction: disbelief, shock; it seemed impossible the President could be assassinated in "our day and age". I remember sitting fixed in front of the black and white tv in our living room, watching, speechless.

in my diary I noted that Hi-Club pizza party was cancelled that night; but the following day - November 23rd - I went to Soldiers' Field to see Empehi play C.V.S. We lost 7-0. Is that possible?

I just saw a documentary a couple of weeks ago called "The Smoking Gun"...not another conspiracy theory. Even more tragic, if true!  There was a book written about it claiming JFK was killed by "friendly fire" by mistake! It seems a CIA agent in the car behind the President erroneously fired the shot that hit Kennedy in the back of his head. The CIA body guard scheduled to accompany the motorcade had been substituted at the last minute by another CIA office employee, someone unfamiliar and not adept with firearms...:((


Marie Stazzone

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What I remember most is being out of school for several days and Rob Smith (Sutherland '62 and later the Academy) and I sitting around his house being bored spitless because there was nothing on TV except assassination stuff.

Will Hepburn

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I was in Accounting when it was announced. I remember feeling frightened and confused. Carolyn Buhman and I were dating...we met outside school and walked to the park by the train station...I remember we just held hands sat on the bench, neither of us knowing what to say.........

It was our 9/11........

After reading Russo's "The Outfit" and Weiner's "A Legacy of Ashes", I'm aware that there was no shortage of people who wanted Kennedy dead (and Bobby, too) and had the means to do it. Alas, Camelot, like home ownership and equal protection under the law, was a myth, then and now.

At the end of the day, we all killed him.

Ron Robertson
'65

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Hi Marie,

That was a Secret Service Agent who was supposed to have shot the President by accident with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. There was a book written in the late 70's which first reported this event and recently another author has written another book reiterating that initial premise about JKF being killed by friendly fire; this time he had a whole lot of convincing ballistic evidence and a Cable TV documentary to back up his claims. It just doesn't seem possible that 10 Secret Service Agents could keep this thing a secret for 50 years. I've seen the TV show and though it is quite convincing, I'd have to say that it just isn't true.

Dennis Carlson
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I am attracted to the premise that Dennis mentioned (but didn't agree with) - that Oswald missed Kennedy but an accidental discharge for a SS man hit Kennedy. I like it because Oswald was not really likely to be able to make that shot well with his Carcano rifle, descending angle and moving target, but I especially like it for another reason:

All the reports, investigations and etc. really fail to find any actual evidence of any conspiracy, but they all smell of cover-up. I think almost all of us believe that the truth of the assination has been withheld from us. Those joint conclusions - no conspiracy but an obvious cover-up - do fit with well with an accidental discharge by the SS man in the following limo. In the film footage he is seen to fall over backwards over the trunk of the limo as it accelerates at the sound of shots. As he falls, his AR-15 ends up pointed forward and there may or may not be enough clarity in the film to actually see a cartridge ejected from his rifle. Kennedy's described wound fits much more closely to the usual damage of those early, unstable 5.56 mm AR-15 projectiles than to the pencil-like, through and through injury likely from the 6.5 mm Carcano bullet.

Was there a cover-up? Let's see, They lost the president's brain!! Governor Connelly (sp?) refused for the rest of his life to have the projectile lodged in his wrist removed and examined, and his family refused to allow it to be removed after he died! Was there a cover up? Find the book "The Best Evidence" and see how contrived the public story of the asassination is.

I take some solace in this theory. My view of how the world worked was turned upside down by the Kennedy Asassination. If the obvious smell of cover-up is not in regards to a conspiracy, not in regards to a dark force that is capable of penetrating into our world and rearranging it like that, I am relieved a little bit.

Claude Heale '68
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The Warren Commission report is quite detailed and on line:

archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report

I think it does a pretty good job of detailing the entire assassination. I think that the Commission probably got it right.

Within a few months a major industry developed with people proposing theories about the assassination:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories
I saw a few presentations some years after the assassination. One fellow told us that there were fingerprints of 30 plus Dallas Police in the room from where Oswald shot JFK. He intimated they were in on the assassination. That of course is ludicrous - way too many people involved.

Oswald and Ruby were both strange characters. It is hard for me to think that anyone would entrust those two smucks to anything important.

It is certainly not impossible that the Communists and/or mob put Oswald up to it. But it is also hard to figure out why Ruby would shoot him and go to jail for the rest of his life. Ruby was a borderline nut and loved to talk. Hard to believe he would not have told the world before he died. He thought he had been injected with cancer cells.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby



Craig Hullinger MPHS Jan 66
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On this 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, how many of you remember attending the silent Empehi football game, where cheering was forbidden out of respect for the somberness of the occasion? Perhaps a few of you even played in the game. How did it feel to be playing to a silent stadium?
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I did not attend the game.
Craig Hullinger MPHS Jan 66
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________________________________________

Who killed JFK? 50 years of conspiracy theories

JFK

It was the CIA, the KGB, aliens or an accident. Why three shots fired in Dallas still reverberate across America

LAST UPDATED AT 11:54 ON MON 25 NOV 2013
IT was all over in a few seconds, but the assassination of John F Kennedy on 22 November 1963 has generated five decades of "painstaking, and for some unsatisfying, analysis," the Daily Mail says.
Two years ago, a team of historians and retired Secret Service officers used the latest digital technology to analyse all the available film and still images taken in Dallas that day. Their conclusion: a "categorical confirmation" that JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone. But as the 50th anniversary of the president's killing approaches, the conspiracy theories that have sprung up around the event seem all but indestructible. Here are the topics that have triggered the most debate:
The 'magic bullet' theory:
Oswald fired just three bullets in Dallas. But he killed JFK and badly wounded Governor John Connally who was sitting in the front seat of the limousine. The Warren Commission - the investigation into JFK's killing set up in 1963 - came up with the 'single-bullet theory' to explain how Oswald did so much damage with just three rounds. It posits that both men were hit by a single bullet which "entered JFK's upper back, exited his throat, and then struck Connally, breaking a rib and shattering his wrist, and finally coming to rest in his thigh," says the Mary Ferrell Foundation. Sceptics say the trajectory was fanciful and re-named it the 'magic bullet theory'. It's just one reason why conspiracy theorists think more than one shooter was involved.
The grassy knoll:
Most JFK conspiracy theories pivot around the idea that Oswald wasn't acting alone. When the president was hit by the bullet that killed him, the motorcade was passing a grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street. Newspaper photographs record that shortly after the shooting, police arrested three tramps found in a railroad car behind the knoll. Because the men were clean-shaven and well dressed there was speculation that they were CIA assassins rather than hobos.
The long list of culprits:
If Oswald was a paid assassin rather than a disaffected loner, who was writing his pay cheques? The list of candidates is long, but some names are put forward more than most. They are:
The CIA
The idea that the assassination was a CIA plot sounds bizarre, but conspiracy theorists suggest the president's alleged comment that he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" made him an agency target. Other theories suggest that one of the tramps (see above) was E Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative who was involved in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation to oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The Mafia
Why would the mafia want JFK dead? Because his brother, Robert, was turning up the heat on organised crime. Robert was the US attorney general at the time and his "anti-mafia crusade" had lead to a sharp increase in the number of prosecutions of senior mafia figures.
The KGB
"The Soviets had a palpable, powerful motive [to kill JFK]: to gain revenge for the humiliation of the USSR in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis," says Scienta Press. Oswald was a communist and had spent time in the USSR. His "Russian odyssey" afforded the KGB "many opportunities to interact with him".
Lyndon B Johnson
In 2003, a Gallup poll revealed that 20 per cent of Americans believed Johnson had something to do with JFK's death. Theories include the vice president's "desire to become president, his need to cover up scandals, and his involvement with the FBI", says the Environmental Graffiti website.
The Little Green Men
Another theory suggests JFK was killed for showing too much interest in "alien activity". There are two "crucial" pieces of evidence backing this up. The first is a letter written by JFK to the CIA in which he demands to see secret UFO files. The second is a note from a senior CIA official that says "we cannot allow" the president to see the classified material.
The Illuminati
The secretive powerbrokers who control the world are obvious candidates for a JFK conspiracy theory. The president fell foul of the Illuminati, it has been suggested, because he wanted to end the Vietnam War, a conflict that was paying the "shadowy bankers" handsome dividends. The Illuminati were also "angered" by JFK's attempts to "rein in" the power of the US Federal Reserve, triggering a deadly backlash.
Friendly fire
Not all sceptics rely on elaborate conspiracies to explain the killing. A simpler alternative suggests that one of JFK’s own bodyguards fired the fatal shot by accident. As Oswald fired on the president, the theory goes, Secret Service agent George Hickey cocked his automatic rifle to return fire. When the car he was in stopped suddenly, he discharged his weapon by mistake. "It's not sexy. It's not rife with intrigue," Bonar Menninger, a journalist and proponent of the theory told NBC News. "But for that reason, in my mind, it's extremely compelling — because it's the only theory that hews tightly to the available evidence." Hickey sued for libel in 1995, but a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had passed and dismissed the case. · 
For further concise, balanced comment and analysis on the week's news, try The Week magazine.Subscribe today and get 6 issues completely free.


Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/jfk-anniversary/55933/who-killed-jfk-50-years-conspiracy-theories#ixzz2llwubuaj



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