November 22, 1963
by Nearly everyone alive on this date remembers where he or she was at half-past noon Eastern time. Here are the thoughts recorded by a college student during the tragic weekend of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In the summer of 1963, I celebrated my twenty-second birthday. A student at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan at the time, I was looking forward to my senior year of college. I took several writing courses, and I am certain it was an instructor who challenged his students to keep a daily journal as a source book for ideas for writing who was responsible for my keeping a journal during that year. It turned out to be the only year in my life that I have written about every day. It also turned out to be an important document to me, since that was a very important year in my life and in our country’s history.
The entries for November 22 through 26 are of particular interest here. That was the weekend vividly remembered by nearly everyone who was alive at the time. That was the weekend of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Here is what I wrote each of those four historic nights.
November 22: Today is a sad day in American history. President Kennedy was shot to death by a perverted young man in the streets of Dallas, Texas. A great president is dead.
What can one say when such a tragic event occurs? Not only is there the impact of the tragic death of a man, a husband, a father, but also the tragic fact that one human being can be so blinded by unreasonable hate as to act so cruelly and unjustly toward another human being.
Strange, that every president to take office in an even year ending in zero has died in office. The man who takes the office in 1980 will have to be a brave man.
November 23: The nation — the world — continues to mourn the death of John F. Kennedy. Strange how a man perverted with unreasonable hate can in a moment of time, acting entirely on his twisted, hate-filled motives, plunge a man into eternity and a nation into despair and grief. Lee Oswald has written himself into America history permanently. He’ll always be remembered as the fanatic, twisted “punk with a mail-order rifle” who shot and killed President John Kennedy.
I’m glad I’m an American. I’m glad I live in a free country, as a free citizen. America the beautiful. God bless America.
November 24: In a strangely dramatic twist of events today, a man named Jack Rubenstein shot and killed Lee Oswald, the man who killed President Kennedy.
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