50 years ago: The loss of JFK

The Canessa Commentary
By Kevin Canessa Jr.

DALLAS —

So this is a hockey blog, indeed. And yet, I feel compelled to write a little about the up-coming, 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

His assassination came 11 years before I was born. And yet, I somehow still feel a kinship to the man I never saw alive. He died well before I was born, and wasn’t exactly the most moral of men, and yet he had an impact many people who knew and loved him still feel today.

All photos By Cecil Stoughton

President and Mrs. Kennedy disembark Air Force One at Love Field, Dallas,

on Nov. 22, 1963, just an hour before the president would be murdered.

Our generation had its Kennedy moment on Sept. 11, 2001. We remember where we were when 9/11 happened — and those who were alive Nov. 22, 1963 certainly remember where they were when they learned the president was killed by an assassin’s (or multiple assassins’) bullets that chilly afternoon.

I can’t even begin to fathom what it must have been like to be alive and to have had to allow the events of that day settle in. The closest thing I ever experienced was when Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington in 1981. Unlike Kennedy, Reagan survived.

I remember, even being just 5 at the time, worrying about the president’s well-being.

And still cannot fathom what it would have been like had Reagan died.

And yet, to this day, so many things that happened in Dallas still don’t quite register with me.

Like how it was possible the President of the United States could be paraded around in an unprotected, open car. That day, there was a lot of  rain — but it stopped in time for the parade around Dallas. Had the rain not stopped, Kennedy might not have been shot and killed that day. Yet it’s still impossible to fathom how the car was open in the first place, especially knowing Kennedy wasn’t exactly in friendly territory if you will.

I still cannot understand how there is a human being on this planet who believes Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person to shoot at the president.

Mortified onlookers hide for cover as others take videos.

The only video taken that shows the final impact on Kennedy, which was shot by a man called Abraham Zapruder, shows me without question the final shot came from a direction other than where the first shot came from in the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

I still don’t get how Jack Ruby was able to access Oswald to shoot him days after the president was killed. I know Ruby was friendly with many a Dallas cop, but really? He was simply able to waltz down a driveway from the street right to the very spot Oswald was being taken to for transport?

Let me be clear here — I certainly believe that despite his assertions to the contrary, that Oswald had a role in Kennedy’s death. It makes me laugh when Oswald’s widow says she’s now convinced her ex didn’t kill the late president.

But there were just so many things that day that will never jive for me. I know it was a different era, and things were just done differently — but can you imagine the Secret Service actually wiped up all the blood from the president’s car after he was taken inside Parkland Hospital?

I mean, the blood spray along could have told investigators where the shots came from, based on the direction of disbursement.

President Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office from Judge Sarah Hughes,
with Mrs. Kennedy at his side. Hughes is the only woman to have ever administered
the Presidential Oath of Office.

Sure it was the 1960s, but it's unthinkable that members of the Dallas Police Department picked up Oswald’s alleged rifle and shell casings with their bare hands!

It was a national nightmare based on the events alone, but the way this case was handled by investigators is a lesson in simply how not to handle a case.

And here we are, all these years later, and we still don’t really know what happened. And we likely never will unless, by miracle, new evidence surfaces that, until now, has been kept secret better than anything the CIA does.

Still, 50 years later, Kennedy’s assassination resonates clearly and vividly. I surely hope we never, as a nation, ever have to experience anything like it again.

Kennedy was only 46 when he died, but in just three years, he certainly left his mark on our nation.

The greatest shame of it all is that we’ll never know what else could have been.

Rest in peace, Mr. President. Rest in peace.