Friday, November 22, 1963 The Frances Hubbard Diaries

November 22, 1963

Friday, lovely day, 60's.  I washed in am.  David and Clifton got the trailer at LaVerne's.  President Kennedy was shot at Dallas, Texas 1 pm.

Comment: The trailer is for the trip to California to stay for the winter. Most of us who lived through the assassination of Kennedy remember distinctly where we were and what we were doing when we heard about it. I'm sure the same is true about 9.11. I had completed my morning classes at SUNY@Albany and headed home to get some lunch at the trailer on Central Avenue in Albany when I heard it on the radio. When I got to the trailer, I turned on the black and white portable TV we had and watched the news coverage. The picture on the TV would only stay stable for about 5 minutes at a time and then the horizontal and vertical scroll would malfunction and you could not see the picture but the sound would stay on. I watched the rest of the afternoon, turning the TV off and on so the picture would stabilize until Walter Cronkite finally declared the President dead.  


Mom's recording of the event is typically laconic in less than 10 words....


Kennedy was hated by the right-wing pretty much the way Obama and Biden are now but the hatred and lies about him did not spew into the country's discourse through anonymous emails and websites like we have today, so many people, me included, were not aware of this intense hatred. The reaction to the event was dramatic around the world, schools were let out, some TV stations stopped all regular programming and played funeral music until another news bulletin, and of course, Kennedy immediately became the most wonderful president since Lincoln in the minds of many around the world and in the words of most of the US politicians of all parties. I personally thought it was a helluva thing but his luster with me had diminished significantly with the Bay Of Pigs fiasco so I did not buy into the mindless adulation of many. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article about the reaction around the world to the incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_to_the_assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy

Now there are several articles and opinions available from supposed experts that Kennedy may have been the worst president in the 20th Century:

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/15/was_john_f_kennedy_the_flat_out_absolute_worst_us_president_of_the_20th_century

I also think, that had he lived, he would have been rocked by sexual scandal as history has shown he was extremely promiscuous, requiring a woman every day to prevent headaches.  When reading about these exploits that the national press completely ignored at the time,  all I feel is a sense of deep betrayal that all of this was blatantly going on in my lifetime and I did not have a clue..here is an excerpt from a link:

"Finally, whatever positive legacy JFK would have been able to leave with would have been ruined by Judith Exner. Exner was Kennedy’s mistress until 1962 when the FBI told the president that they knew of the affair. Kennedy also had allegedly an affair with Marilyn Monroe and had relations with Inga Arvad, who had accompanied Hitler to the 1936 Olympic Games. We all saw how the Republicans tried to burn down Clinton when news of his presidential affair came out, but imagine the firestorm in the early ’60s when America still supposedly had its morals. Kennedy would have been demonized in every media outlet that existed. As it happened, those who knew of Kennedy’s affairs waited before spilling the details of the President’s sex life, saving him from scandal in his lifetime. However, if news of his affairs had come out during his time in office, say, the mid 60’s, assuming he won reelection in 1964, it would have damned his image as a family man. And if these allegations would have come out after his presidency (as what really happened), his legacy would have been further marred."

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago."...........