Fifty years ago today I was a freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans sitting in my German 101 class when the teacher told us that President Kennedy had been shot. She asked the class to say in German The President has been shot which I thought was weird. We did not know at that time if he was alive or dead. Of course once class let out we learned the awful truth. November 22, 1963 was a Friday (just like today) and I left for Thanksgiving holiday the next day to return to my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. I remember sitting in my parents living room watching live TV of Lee Harvey Oswald being escorted out if Dallas Police Headquarters on Sunday when Jack Ruby rushed up and shot him. Amazing! And what a coincidence for me. I lived in Fort Worth where President Kennedy gave his last speech of his presidency at the Hotel Texas. And I was attending Tulane in New Orleans where a few years later in 1966, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began his goofy investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. During our senior year in high school in Fort Worth several of us used to sneak over to Dallas to go to one of Jack Rubys strip clubs (I dont remember the name now) where they would let us in to watch the show but serve us only soft drinks. We had no idea at the time whose club we were in but we sure did later. P.S. Here is a little related anecdote that you might find amusing. Many years ago I was doing a photo shoot for Southwestern Bell. We were shooting in one of their sub-stations where all the telephone lines merge and get switched around to other sub-stations or to other phones. Now this may not be the case today but back then each sub-station could only handle so many phone calls coming through at once. If too many people picked up their phones at the same time it could overload the system. I asked the guy who was explaining this to me if this had ever happened. He said that in all the years he had worked for SWB it had happened only twice: the day President Kennedy was assassinated and... the day Elvis died.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:26:16 +0000