On Nov. 22, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy succumbed to an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, Texas. As Kennedy’s motorcade wove past hundreds of supporters, Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president, and the country came to a standstill as the youngest president ever to be elected died in a hospital a few minutes later.
Forty years later, some people still vividly remember that historical day and the man who is one of America’s most memorable leaders.
Journalism Professor Emeritus Kenneth Metzler remembers he was walking in a hallway in Allen Hall when he heard a student make a flippant remark about how people couldn’t push Kennedy around anymore because he was dead. Metzler said he rushed over to the Emerald office — which at the time was on the third floor of the building — where the staff was huddled around the AP teletype listening to the news.
“The first reports were coming in,” he said. The reports said Kennedy had been shot in the head.
Everyone was shocked, Metzler said. After hearing the news, one professor kept saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, that’s terrible.”
One of Metzler’s most vivid memories is when his 5-year-old daughter asked him about four days later, “When will people be happy again?”
“(Kennedy) was extraordinary and charismatic,” Metzler said. “I was just entranced by him … He reminded me a little of Bill Clinton.”
Political Science Professor Emeritus James Klonoski said he was on his way to class when another professor told him the news.
“I didn’t stop in horror,” he said. “(But) since I was a Democrat, it was hard to take.” He said, despite the harsh news, he proceeded to his class and tried to get through the day.
The shock was evident in other parts of the country, too.
University History Professor Daniel Pope was a college sophomore in Pennsylvania when Kennedy died. He said he had a “delayed reaction” to the assassination, but many people were just stunned.
“In terms of immediate shock and horror, it was almost unduplicated,” Pope said, adding that he can’t think of anything in his lifetime other than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that had the same psychological effect.
At the University of Montana, University Assistant Adjunct Professor Dean Rea was standing in a classroom near a wire service machine when the first news bulletin reported that Kennedy had been shot.
“I was shocked and saddened but, as a former newspaper reporter, realized that this incident would develop into one of the great news stories of our times,” Rea said in an e-mail interview. He said he had admired the way Kennedy kindled a sense of hope among people with bold initiatives like the Peace Corps and civil rights.
Elected at 43 years of age, Kennedy took office on January 20, 1961. He was the youngest president in the nation’s history and the first Catholic to be elected for the post. Klonoski said one had to live in those days to appreciate what Kennedy meant to people. The president stands out in history because of his youth, enthusiasm and intelligence, Klonoski said.
“It was a revival of a positive government and he was going to put energy back into national government,” Klonoski said.
He said he was at Kennedy’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., when Kennedy uttered his famous directive, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask instead what you can do for your country.”
“The promise of those words just went through the crowd and through the nation,” Klonoski said, adding that Kennedy brought “hope back into the hearts and minds of America.”
Pope said Kennedy is remembered because of the image of youth and apparent energy. However, there is now evidence that shows the president suffered from several physical problems.
“He projected an image of being fresh and new and vital in ways that American politics in the ’50s didn’t have,” Pope said.
Whether Kennedy actually had a significant impact on the political sphere is up for analysis.
“His direct impact was a relatively limited one,” Pope said. He said Kennedy was not particularly effective in getting measures through Congress and he may have lost the support of more conservative politicians with some of his ideas.
Kennedy’s administration was not without troubles. Kennedy’s support of Cuban exiles who tried to topple communist Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 undermined his image. And the stand-off with Russia on nuclear weapons in the escalating Cold War also posed another challenge.
There is also some speculation on how Kennedy would have handled the Vietnam conflict.
Rea said Kennedy was responsible for increasing the U.S. military presence in Vietnam, which eventually led to a war that “cost the nation a generation of young men and women.”
“I have often wondered whether the United States would have charted a more peaceful path in Southeast Asia had he lived,” he said.
Nonetheless, Kennedy did leave legacies that still stand today. One of his most tangible contributions was the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961. He was also active in the civil rights movement.
Pope said the assassination ended Kennedy’s administration before questions about his life could be answered. It left a “mystique” as people wondered what great things he might have been able to accomplish had he lived.
Forty years later, those questions and the memory of the man still remain.