WHERE WERE YOU WHEN KENNEDY WAS SHOT?

"A MAN SHOT DOWN IN A SOUTHERN TOWN
IN THE SUMMER OF HIS YEARS . . ."

After 42 Years the  memory of that the Weekend
Of the Kennedy Assassination Remain Vivid.

FRIDAY: November 22, 1963

, I was 21, working as a purchasing clerk at the Sucher Packing Company on the West Side of Dayton. I was assisting the stockroom clerk in counting and posting the monthly inventory of Visqueen luncheon loaf bags and bologna casings by thousands and spices and nitrites by pounds and ounces.

I worked in an office separated from the main plant and suite of offices by a sort of courtyard with loading docks at one end and our three-room outbuilding at the other. It housed the offices of the facilities engineer, the truck foreman and the purchasing group, where I had a desk across from the secretary, Sandy, and in front of the purchasing manager, Jack Gannon.

Jack was an Irish Catholic, as was I until I left the church at 19. But Jack was raised in Georgia, which separated us culturally. Jack was not only a Republican, but a right-winger who blamed every social, economic and strategic shortcoming of the United States on the Roosevelts, Frank and Eleanor, and the Kennedies.

On the 4th floor of the main plant, in the stockroom, big, black, Jim Nelson, who dabbled at the edges of civil rights activism, and I were seated on either side of his big, rough wooden desk, running down the list of supplies and checking counts, when he reached suddenly for the radio and turned up the volume. I found the intrusion of the newscast distracting, thinking we should be getting on with it, rather than listening to an account of the Presidential motorcade through Dallas. Jim raised his hand, as if calling for silence or attention. He said, “It’s from Dallas.”

I heard the words, “shots fired”. Then, there was a rambling account of the foregoing few seconds, and after what seemed an interminable length of time, more words in incomplete sentences, “President believed wounded... Not seriously wounded... Head wound.”

Jim and I looked at each other in shock. I know I did not fear the worst. It was impossible to imagine that JFK, strong, vigorous and heroic, larger than life, movie-star handsome, could be killed. I could not imagine him dead. He was human, but not mortal, not now, at 46.

I said, “I’ll call Jack.” I told the boss that they said on the radio that President Kennedy was shot. He expressed disbelief. Finally, convinced there was no joke, he calmly retorted, “Uhmm, look, Art, You and Jim have an inventory to do. Don’t call back unless the son of a bitch is dead, OK?”

Jim and I looked at each other in shocked disbelief after I relayed Jack’s comment to him. We continued the task in silence, arousing only occasionally to look dumbly at the radio. “Unconfirmed reports of a head wound... Fighting for his life.” 

Later, between 2:30 and 3pm, I was in a large storage shed counting corrugated cartons for shipping pork loins and hams, wieners and bacon, when I heards footsteps on the concrete floor behind me. I turned to see Jack, doing an exagerated, loose-limbed affectation of being relaxed or unconcerned. He said, “Art, your hero didn’t make it.”

Then he turned on his heel and sauntered out of the shed as if he had no care in the world.

"A man shot down in a Southern town in the summer of his years. . . " 
[Song, Connie Francis]

SATURDAY MORNING: November 23 found us all at work until 11 or noon to reconcile the inventory. We said little. Jack ridiculed upper management for declaring a day of mourning for the slain president and canceling work on Monday. He referred to Mrs. Kennedy as “that slut”.

Sandy exclaimed, “Jack, you’re kidding, right?”

He said, “KIdding? About Jackie Kennedy? She’s a Goddamn slut!”

Sandy was almost brought to tears. Deafening silence deadened the outrage in the room.

We had to take a recount of some lard buckets in the main plant. As Jack and I walked in silence across the courtyard, we passed a pork department foreman named “Whitey”, who hailed from Alabama. "Whitey" and Jack said not a word to each other, but their faces broke into broad expressions of glee, barely stifling giggles, as they nodded, knowingly. I said, as much to myself, or the wind, as to Jack, “The unreconstructed Southerners must be very happy today.”

Jack turned and shouted, “Hey Whitey! Art just said, ”The unconstructed Southerners must be very happy today!"

Whitey’s face reddenned, not from embarrassment, but from trying to control his laughter. He said, “YES! THEY ARE!”

2005: Jack Gannon is still living in the Dayton area. I see him from time to time at Clancy's Pub. He's in his '70s but he hasn't changed so much. I guess I have. If he has recognized me he hasn't acknowledged so. I've had no contact with him since I left Sucher's to work at a slaughterhouse across town. I'm sure I have the capacity to greet him with civility - but I would rather  just leave him be.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well  or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any     burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,    oppose any foe to assure the survival and the     success of liberty."                              

[John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. January 20, 1961]

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."

[John F. Kennedy] 

Don McLean - in his great pop-folk epic, AMERICAN PIE, may be referencing the assassination (or may be not... )

"... Oh, and while the King was looking down The jester stole his thorny crown... "

 One interpretation of the lyric has Lee Harvey Oswald as the jester who ended the reign of JFK and "stole his crown."

"The courtroom was adjourned, No verdict was returned."

No verdict was returned for the assassination of JFK because the assassin was killed - (assassinated by mob-connected nightclub owner Jack Ruby) - so the court was adjourned.

"They shot him in the backseat of a Lincoln Limousine . . . "  [Song, Jerry Lee Lewis]