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That's where we heard the news...
November 22, 1963. Eighth grade study hall. The news came on what had been a quiet Friday afternoon. President Kennedy had been shot. My classmates and the entire school were assembled into a large auditorium with a TV on stage. The only other times that we had watched television during an assembly were NASA space launches or an inning or two from World Series games. Shortly after we were all seated, a very emotional Walter Cronkite of CBS News announced that the President was dead. Forty-five years later I walked the halls of that same school with two classmates during a class reunion. As we passed the classroom that had been our study hall, we all said the same thing – “That’s where we heard the news about President Kennedy.”
Before I graduated from high school, there were two more tragic assassinations – Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the remainder of the decade also was dominated by the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights and student unrest.
As a graduate student at Indiana University, I decided to study American political assassinations in detail. After researching the available information and making numerous trips to Dallas, Washington, Los Angeles and other locations to interview witnesses, researchers, members of Congress between 1975 and 1979, I put together an outline for a class on the History of American Political Assassinations, which I taught at two different campuses (Western New England College and Holyoke Community College) from 1979 to 1983.
My approach to the two Kennedy assassinations has always been academic and my lectures have often been wonderful opportunities to assist students with term papers and other research related to these tragic events. I’ve also had the opportunity (or misfortune!) to consult with NBC, ABC, BBC and PBS on programs that included a mini-series, a purported scientific analysis of the JFK assassination, and a proposed prime-time network news special on new information on the RFK assassination. My academic approach was also one of the reasons that I was selected by Mayor Thomas Bradley of Los Angeles in 1986 to be part of a special committee that was charged with the responsibility to select a repository for the Los Angeles Police Department records on the assassination of Senator Kennedy.
Today, a third generation of students are still curious about the deaths of the two Kennedy brothers. Please let me know how I can meet the needs of your campus community with a lecture specifically designed for your student activities board or academic department.