Little did we know how that time would cast a shadow over our lives, and even our children's and grandchildren's lives.

I honestly do not remember Robert Kennedy's assassination. I have seen television rebroadcasts of the event; maybe they are confused in my mind with any actual memories. All I can say is that I have no memory that I can personally relate to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. As for Martin Luther King, I remember sitting in front of the television, watching some show or another, and the announcement that King had been shot came on. I was alone at the time. I do not remember anything else.

The death of John Kennedy, some five years earlier, is however another story. Perhaps it is true that every American old enough at the time to remember does remember exactly where he or she was at the time they first heard the news. There may be some exceptions; but, by enlarge, I think it is true.

So I was seventeen at the time. It was my senior year at Ribault Senior High School here in Jacksonville. It was the beginning of the last class period of the day. For me that was an elective art class which was scheduled to last only 30 minutes that day because it was a Friday; and, the last thirty minutes of each Friday was usually devoted to a pep rally to cheer on the school football team.

I went to sharpen a pencil. The pencil sharpener was connected to a cabinet which was next to the classroom door. The school intercom was high up on the wall in front of me. I had just began to sharpen the pencil when the intercom came on. It was a man's voice and it said that the President had been shot in Dallas. No other news.

I finished sharpening my pencil. What else was I to do? Then I went back to my table. In this art class we sat at tables instead of desks. There were three others, besides me, at my table, two girls and a boy, Rufus Hafer, who later was a weatherman, for a number of years, at Jacksonville's local CBS affiliate. Rufus sat right in front of me. We had become friends of sorts, and he said something to me; but I don't remember what.

Then the announcement came on that the President was dead and that the pep rally and school for the rest of the day were cancelled.

As we get older and think back, we realize that our true memories are all just a series of little snapshots; and, the rest is just reconstruction. So, it is for me with that day and all that followed. I don't remember the bus ride home. I just know that I must have taken the bus because I would have had no other way home; and, I remember arriving home and walking through the front door into the living room and then the kitchen where my mother was standing and talking to her long time friend Emma Reynolds. It was Emma who asked me if I had heard the news. I don't remember what I said.

I know that we must have all listened to the news all the time over the next couple of days. I have heard my mother talk of it. I just do not specifically remember it.

My next memories are of the following sunday, the day Lee Harvey Oswald died.

At the time, there was a bit of news in Jacksonville other than just the assassination. Jacksonville was in the middle of a polio epidemic. It wasn't an epidemic like in the forties and fifties; but, a few people in the city had come down with it and memories of full blown epidemics were still fresh. It had already been scheduled, even in advance of the assassination, that upcoming sunday the Jacksonville public was to be vaccinated against polio. We were going to try out the new Sabin oral vaccine; and, everyone was supposed to take the new vaccine even if they had been vaccinated before which I had. The nearest distribution point to us was Garden City Elementary School. I went with my brother-in-law to pick up our family's vaccine.

In the school's auditorium there was a big long table with piles and piles of sugar cubes, each colored with a splash of pink, a drop of vaccine. I ate my sugar cube right there in the auditorium and I think my brother-in-law did too. I know he drove me back home while I held the precious bundle. He dropped me off and went to get some gas. I went in the house and delivered the vaccine to my parents and my sister, Beverly, and her two daughters. The youngest daughter,Vicki, ate her sugar cube with no problems; but, the eldest one, Deborah who was eight at the time, spit hers out. Fortunately I had brought some extra cubes. Beverly gave Deborah another sugar cube and told her to swallow it or she would get a spanking. Deborah swallowed the cube.

At that moment, my brother-in-law walked through the front door and told us he had heard on the car radio that Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot! We immediately cut on the television! Exactly what we heard though, at that time, I do not remember. I just know that Oswald did die.

I know that J.F.K.'s funeral had to have been occurring that day; but, I do not remember that as a fact. I do remember the riderless black horse and the world leaders walking in the funeral procession. I remember how much taller Charles deGaulle was than the others.

At the time, and for several years thereafter, I was inclined to believe that there was a conspiracy responsible for Kennedy's death. It was so much more exiting that way.

Since then, having learned more about how the world works, I have learned that, regardless of what we are told, things do happen without a reason; and, regardless of what we want to believe, one freckless moment can change history. I also realize that the most exiting and romantic answer is not necessarily the correct one.

So I have come to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was a immature and confused young man who did act alone; and, the confusion of the time made it possible for a not quite so young, but just as immature and confused, Jack Ruby to also act alone.

I also know that there is a lot of money to be made selling books and things about conspiracies; but, that does not make them all true.

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION HOME PAGE