Remembering the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated

By Dominic Odipo

Kenya: It was the week that was. It was the news bulletin that even the television news anchors wept over as they read. It was the news that shocked and stunned not only the entire United States of America but the whole world.

Here in Nairobi the time was 9pm and preparations were in high gear for the Independence Day celebrations which were only 20 days away. In London, it was 6 pm; in Washington DC and in New York City it was 2 pm.

And in Dallas, Texas the time was approximately 1pm when the doctor in charge in Trauma Room One at the Parklands Memorial Hospital formally declared that President John F. Kennedy was dead.

Strangers hugging

The date was November 22, 1963, a Friday,  as, curiously, it will again be this Friday when the United States marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy (JFK), its 35th president.

Nobody who was old enough at the time can fail to remember exactly where he was or what he was doing when the news came that President Kennedy was dead. Strangers stopped and hugged each other in the streets.

Drivers pulled their cars off the roads as if driving and listening to the car radio had suddenly become incompatible. Men and women wept as openly in Oakland, California as they did in Auckland, New Zealand, half a world away. Millions wept for the slain American President more ardently and emotionally than they had ever wept for any of their own kith and kin.

In Texas, the time was just after 12.30 pm when the presidential motorcade, snaking its way through downtown Dallas, slowly passed by the six-storey book depository on its way to the Dallas Trade Mart where the President was scheduled to speak.

The crowds were out in full trying to catch a glimpse of the President, a Democrat, even though Texas was solidly Republican and, therefore, hostile territory, politically.

Then three gun shots rang out in quick succession. In the presidential limousine, Kennedy’s head slowly collapsed into the lap of his wife Jackie who was seated on his left.

“Ooh, no!’’, Jackie cried out as her husband’s blood and brains were splashed onto her designer pink dress. In the immediate confusion, the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect the President at all times, took over and ordered the motorcade to gun directly for the Parklands Memorial, only a few minutes away.

Upon arrival at the hospital, the stricken President was immediately rushed to Trauma Room One and its top doctors paged to converge and attend to the top profile patient. According to one of the first doctors to arrive in the trauma room, the President had “no blood pressure, no heartbeat and no pulse. We were breathing for him.”

Brain destroyed

Half of his brain had been destroyed by a bullet which had struck the back of his skull and there was a tiny bullet hole just under his Adam’s Apple. The case was effectively hopeless. No doctor or medicine could have saved anyone in that condition. It was just a matter of time before the inevitable came to pass.

Because the President was Roman Catholic, a priest was quickly summoned to come and administer the last rights. “If thy liveth...”, he began and when he was finished, a white sheet was rolled over the President’s face. It was all over.

But what really was over?

At the time of his assassination, JFK was just over 46 years old and had served as the President of the United States for exactly 1,037 days. He was already preparing to run for the presidency again in 1964 and there was no one on the political horizon who seemed capable of defeating him.

The assassination of JFK stunned and shook the world for several reasons. He was the youngest man ever to be elected to the American Presidency, the most powerful political office in the world. He was also probably the richest man ever elected to that office, having become a dollar millionaire himself at the age of 21, courtesy of his father’s Foundation, which automatically paid one million dollars into the account of every Kennedy sibling on his or her 21st birthday.

He had been educated at some of the country’s best schools, including Harvard University and, partly because of his learning and good looks, he had been able to attract some of America’s best and brightest to come and serve in the American government.

In the three years he had led the United States, he had invigorated the American government and inspired both the young and the old to an extent that no other American president had done before him.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated when he was literally on top of the world. Millions of people around the world saw him as the one person they would most have liked to be in another life. Millions of women would have left their husbands at just one nod of his head.

And yet only one or two bullets were enough to bring him down and silence him forever. Death, as it has been so well put, is the great equaliser.

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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