JFK: The shots heard 'round the world

... Nov. 22, 1963 ...

Beverly Shapiro is making her bed in Marblehead, Mass., while listening to the radio.

Terry Gans is a high school senior who’s about to play a game of touch football.

Kip O’Neill is on a plane bound for Dallas.

Terry Griffin is heading out of a college German class at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

David Brenner is meeting with clients in Philadelphia to discuss whether they should take their company public.

Murray Blueglass is in a conference with an elementary student’s parent at Dows Lane Elementary School in Irvine-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Shapiro hears the news on the radio.

Gans’ friend pulls up in his car and tells the group to turn on the radio.

The pilot on O’Neill’s plane makes an announcement.

Griffin hears the news from a co-ed. Brenner hears it when a secretary bursts into the meeting.

Blueglass and the student’s mother hear the message on the school’s intercom.

Fifty years have passed since President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, but many remember Nov. 22, 1963, as if it were yesterday.

...

Blueglass, who is president of the Longboat Key Democratic Club, has always remembered the name of the student whose mother was in the conference: Emily, who would now be more than 60, and went on to become a physician.

He and Emily’s mother looked at each other, their eyes watering up, after they heard the announcement of Kennedy’s death.

“She said, ‘I guess we’ll have to continue this some other time,’ and left,” Blueglass said.

...

Shapiro sat on her bed and wept for the president that her children — ages 5, 6 and 7 at the time — would be too young to remember.

“I had such hope for our country at that time,” she said. “I still cry when I think about it.”

...

Gans, who is now a Longboat Key commissioner, remembers that he and his friends were planning to play football that afternoon because it was a half-day at his Washington, D.C., school. When news broke that Kennedy had died, they walked to the school and lowered the flag. Then, they played their game.

One of the boys Gans played with that day was Richard Rusk, son of then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Gans gave him a ride home that afternoon and discovered that officials were looking for the secretary of state’s son amid the chaos to be sure he wasn’t missing.

Gans went to his part-time job at a grocery store that afternoon and remembers feeling angered by the smiling faces of people who hadn’t heard the news.

“It’s such a sharp memory that it stays fresh,” he said. “The emotion is right there any time I think about it.”

...

O’Neill, who was on her way to visit her fiancé in Del Rey, Texas, remembers the hush that spread over the plane after the pilot announced mid-flight that Kennedy had been shot. Passengers and crew didn’t learn that the president had died until the plane had landed in Dallas, where the assassination occurred.

They waited on the tarmac for around two hours before they were allowed to disembark.

“There was talking and crying. It was very chaotic. No one was allowed to get out of their seats,” O’Neill said.

...

Griffin watched the events unfold on a giant black-and-white TV on Mercer’s campus.

He had recently returned after being stationed in Cold War Europe for three years in the U.S. Army. He and other veterans on campus worried that the events could be a precursor of an invasion.

“We were all in the active reserves, so really one of our first concerns was that we would be called back,” Griffin said. “We thought it had to be something more than a nut with a rifle.”

...

Brenner, who is Longboat Key’s vice mayor, still remembers that Friday and the weekend that followed as “probably the worst weekend of my life.”

He and his client abruptly ended their meeting, and Brenner went straight home because he wanted to be with his family.

His middle child, Lisa, was born the next week.

“One of the lasting effects is that we had pretty well figured out what to call her,” Brenner said. “We kept her first name, which was Lisa, but we changed her middle name to Joan in honor of John Kennedy.”

...

Blueglass and his wife, Alice, were first-time parents when Kennedy was shot. Their son, Michael, was 18 days old at the time of the assassination.

The Blueglasses celebrated Michael’s 50th birthday Nov. 4.

“I told him, ‘You won’t remember this but you were lying in a bassinette and we were watching TV,’” Blueglass said. “You watched as history was being made.”

Where were you?
“I was in my optometrist’s office in DuBois, Pa., when I got the word. I’ll never forget (the optometrist’s) statement. He said, ‘I’ve never wanted to be president of the United States of America. No room for advancement.’”
— Weldon Frost

“We were at our house in Cape Cod in Falmouth, Mass., packing to come down for the winter. Like everybody, we were shocked and stunned. It didn’t matter what your politics because it was the president of the United States.”
— Bobbie Banan

“I was coming out of the American National Bank, where I had done some banking. I was practicing law at the time in Chicago and was walking onto LaSelle Street, and everybody was saying the president has been shot. I turned on the radio, and the rest is history.”
— Arnold Crane

“Vera (his wife) and I were halfway between St. Pete and Bradenton near the top of the old Skyway Bridge.”
— Bud Freeman

Contact Robin Hartill at [email protected]