How government died with Kennedy

The unbelievable truth that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas passed from stunned teachers to students, in hushed words exchanged between workers and from store clerk to customer, until the crushing news came an hour later that the nation's young, charismatic leader was dead.

Kennedy was especially a hero to the young, to Catholics as the first Catholic president, and to the civil rights movement. He also had many detractors. He was blamed for the CIA's failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Through a crackdown by his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he was making enemies with organized crime. In Texas he was not seen as a friend to Big Oil.

In Cape Girardeau on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, the Southeast Missourian reported, "Cars, their lights burning prematurely in mid-afternoon, moved slowly through the streets as in a funeral procession." Tearful Central High School students gathered in the gym to watch the news reports on television. Social events were canceled. The nation went into mourning.

In Perryville, Mo., Sister Paul searched to find a way to tell Steve Richardet's first-grade class what had happened to the president. "I remember her acting it out by drawing a gun out of the holster," he said. The class kneeled and said the rosary for the two hours remaining before school was dismissed.

In some ways for those who remember the assassination and some who don't, the mourning and the quest to understand what really happened that day and why has not ended after 40 years. The death of the president is not the lasting legacy of that day, historians say. It is the loss of faith in government.

Richardet now teaches government at Central High School in Cape Girardeau and has studied in depth the Warren Commission report, issued in September 1964, that accused Lee Harvey Oswald of killing Kennedy by himself. At the end of the 1970s, a Congressional intelligence committee analysis of the shooting using the film taken by Abraham Zapruder found a 95 percent probability that Kennedy was killed by more than one gunman.

The Warren Commission had ordered the Zapruder film kept secret, but it was bootlegged during New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of Oswald's ties to the New Orleans Mafia. The intelligence committee's finding led to the conclusion that the Warren Commission report probably was a coverup, Richardet says.

The American people's loss of faith in their government was heightened by the Vietnam War and Watergate, he says, and represents the biggest tragedy of the assassination.

"In a democracy, anytime anywhere any elected official obstructs justice and the truth, that's a conspiracy against everything we stand for.

"... There's a lot of credibility lost, there's a lot of apathy. I think a lot of it stems .... from the government's handling of the assassination investigation."

Kennedy's assassination was followed by the killings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, then-U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, of radical civil rights leader Malcolm X and American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Anti-integration presidential candidate George Wallace was shot but lived.

Kennedy's assassination began a siege in which a major part of the democratic process died, says Dr. Christopher Schnell, a history professor at Southeast Missouri State University. Killers assumed a function that's supposed to belong to the people.

"We assume we're going to change government," he said.

Government credibility died with Kennedy, Schnell said, agreeing with Richardet's assessment. "I don't know whether it can be resurrected. I don't know if people have ever taken what government says seriously anymore."

As an 18-year-old college student in Kansas, Schnell did grunt work on Kennedy's presidential campaign even though he himself was not old enough to vote.

"He was my hero. I worshipped him," Schnell said.

He described being at a Kennedy campaign stop at a Wichita baseball stadium. The stadium was filled awaiting the arrival of Kennedy's motorcade. As his motorcade pulled into the field, "the place just exploded," Schnell said.

"I never saw an Elvis concert ... but I had never seen people react this way."

Civil rights progress

Kennedy was a hero to then-seventh-grader David Allen too. "I knew he was important to black people," he said. "I didn't know why he was."

Allen, now pastor of St. James AME Church in Cape Girardeau, came to learn that Kennedy faced down Southern governors who were still holding onto segregationist policies, Allen said. "He was not afraid to force the issue."

But Allen thinks the civil rights movement already had too much momentum to be stopped by Kennedy's death. "It was not going to be stopped by the assassination of John Kennedy or Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy or Malcolm X or anybody else," he said.

Dr. Joel Rhodes, an associate professor of history at Southeast, teaches a class on the '60s that covers the assassination. He wasn't yet born when Kennedy was killed. Rhodes' interest in the era comes from having a father who served in the Vietnam War and a mother who was in the antiwar movement.

Kennedy, the youngest elected president at 43, was so beloved by young people because he inspired them, Rhodes said. "He was a dashing young man who issued this call, this challenge to the country. It was very inspirational. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.'"

The assassination occurred as the oldest Baby Boomers were just coming of age politically. "When the assassination takes place, it really decapitates them. They have been inspired by Kennedy to all this passion to commit. Now there's no direction."

One Kennedy adviser has said his death struck them more profoundly than the death of their parents did. When their parents died, there was a sense of losing the past. When Kennedy died, there was a sense of losing their future. "That resonated more," Rhodes said.

After Kennedy's death, some members of the '60s generation channeled their energy to other areas: The student movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the civil rights movement.

Kennedy's death still intrigues the young, says Ben Lowrance, a political science major at the university. "A big reason the Kennedy assassination still resonates with the youth of today is the lack of inspiration that exists, not only in politics, but in society in general."

Lowrance thinks the American media and capitalism have much more of a hold on youthful Americans than the idealism that characterized the '60s, whose spokesman was folk singer Bob Dylan.

"Too many young folks have sold out to the corporation, watching MTV and buying Britney Spears records," he said.

The '60s hold great appeal for him.

"It was a time when participatory democracy was taken to the streets, a time of true inspiration," Lowrance said.

"... People had issues that truly mattered to them."

Who killed Kennedy and why still has never been proved for certain. Schnell thinks either anti-Castro Cubans affiliated with the Mafia or Castro himself ordered the hit. Castro knew the CIA was trying to kill him.

Richardet subscribes to the theory that ex-CIA agents conspired with the Mafia to kill Kennedy, and that though Oswald was involved he "did not even shoot the gun that day. ... The boys in charge kind of turned it around on him."

Richardet and Schnell say they understand why the Warren Commission came up with its conclusions. One of its concerns had to be the possibility that the Soviet Union could be blamed for Kennedy's death less than a year after he faced down Premier Nikita Khrushchev over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Richardet said. "It could have drawn us into World War III."

"They saw their main job was to calm the people down," Schnell said.

Kennedy was shot to death on Friday and was buried the following Monday. The nation watched his funeral procession on television, the cortege rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, and marveled at the composure of his wife, Jacqueline, and grieved all the more for their two little children.

"It was the saddest four days of my life," Schnell said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

Local reaction

"I was at home when President Kennedy was shot. The gravity of the funeral ... just really made more of a lasting impression than the initial news of the shooting." -- Linda Essner, Cape Girardeau

"I was on vacation from the San Diego Police Department visiting my parents in Tucson, Ariz. ... I was totally shocked, then I questioned whether I heard it correctly." -- Mike Rice, Jackson

"I was in the cafeteria at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, Calif. Someone started piping the news over the loudspeaker. ... People at the door heard the commentary, became very quiet and started the wave of silence that spread over the room." -- Gail Babers, Cape Girardeau

"I was at work at Progressive Loan Company in Sikeston. Everyone else was gone to lunch when a friend came in and told me. It didn't really register. ..." -- Ruth Dockins, Cape Girardeau

"I was standing in Hinky's hardware store when it came on TV. ... Everybody was shocked that such a thing could happen to a president." -- Milt Walte, Keokuck, Iowa

"I was a school superintendent at Elmwood Grade School in Elmwood, Ill. ... Of course, I was shocked, to say the least. We went around from room to room -- it was a small school -- to tell the students." -- Maurice Wilhoit, Marion, Ill.

"I was at the Purple Crackle moving my organ from one place to another. I think it came on the radio and a bartender heard it. It was sad. The bartender just flipped out." -- Vi Keys, Cape Girardeau

"I was cleaning a lady's house and had the TV on. I was ironing at the time. They said he'd been shot, and we just hoped he would live." -- Lillie Watson, Cape Girardeau

"I was in the second grade at St. Ambrose Catholic School in Chaffee. ... They let us out of school and we all went home. ... It was especially significant for us because I was in a Catholic school and he was our first Catholic president." -- John Heisserer, Cape Girardeau

"We were at the Brinkopf-Howell Funeral Home. My husband's great uncle, John Fulbright, had passed away. Everyone just sat there stunned. It took a little while for it to sink in." -- Phyllis Jackson, Cape Girardeau

"I was at the University of Kansas, a senior working with university bands as a librarian. ... My roommate and I went by to see a friend at his house. He came out on the porch and said, 'Kennedy has been shot.' He was a joker. We both laughed. But I remember for almost a week sitting and watching the television and crying." -- Dr. Robert Gifford, Cape Girardeau

"I'm a Presbyterian. We had planned with B'nai B'rith to go to the synagogue for their service. ... At first we thought we'd cancel, but after talking to them, we agreed this is where we belonged. The rabbi did a beautiful job of putting a positive spin on it, that we have to live up to Kennedy's expectations." -- Barbara Port, Cape Girardeau

"We lived in a bungalow on Themis Street and kept students who were going to the university. We were listening to the radio and said, 'It can't be. Surely not. This is a mistake.'" -- Irene Popp, Cape Girardeau

"I was president of a small bank in Western Kansas. ... We all stayed glued to the TV and speculated about everything involved." -- Doug Pringle, Cape Girardeau

"I was outside the cafeteria at Paducah Tilghman High School. I'd just finished lunch and was out in the lobby, and the rumor spread. I didn't believe it." -- Barry Pfanstiel, Cape Girardeau

"I was working at the Loenbaum dress factory, and they shut us all down. We couldn't work after that." -- Mary Maupin, Cape Girardeau

"They came on the loudspeaker and told us to stop working, that the president had died. We were shocked, absolutely shocked." -- Reva McClain, Cape Girardeau

"I was at work. The switchboard operator came around and said that he had been killed. We were running around crying." -- Rose Dildine, Cape Girardeau

"I was in college at the University of Illinois in a civil engineering class on structures. People came into class to tell us, and they immediately called off class." -- Dr. Hank Azuma, Cape Girardeau

"I was ironing with the TV on when I heard it. I was so shocked I almost burned up my clothes." -- Dorothy Wolfe, Chaffee

"I was in eighth grade at a parochial school when our principal came over the intercom with the news. After all these years, the thing I remember most is the look on one of the nun's faces." -- Nancy Schindler, Perryville

"I was at home and heard it on the radio. I remember thinking we'd lost a good president. I still think that." -- Bill Johnson, Poplar Bluff, Mo.

"I was baking a birthday cake and watching 'As the World Turns' when Dan Rather came on and announced it." -- Wilma Kothe, Chester, Ill.

"I was working as an operator at Southwestern Bell in St. Louis when our supervisor announced that he'd been shot. I was filled with absolute disbelief. This just didn't happen in America." -- Linda Hunot, Valle Mines, Mo.

"I was on the third floor of Academic Hall just starting class. Dr. Grauel came across the hall and said President Kennedy had been shot. I did dismiss my class. I was pretty upset." -- Peter Hilty, Cape Girardeau

"I was teaching American history at Sandia High School in Albuquerque, N.M., at the time. ... The assistant principal called me into the hall and said the president had been shot. I was just surprised and stunned by that news." -- Frank Nickell, Cape Girardeau

"I was in junior high school English class in Center Valley, Pa. I remember my English teacher crying. I knew how bad it was when I saw her face." -- Bonnie Stepenoff, Cape Girardeau

"I think I was 11 or 12 then. I was in Lincoln Elementary School in Sikeston. They let school out. Everybody was crying." -- J.J. Williamson, Cape Girardeau

"Six of us were having lunch at the Holiday Inn. The girl on the desk came running back crying, saying that the president had been shot. We all rushed out and left our meals. They had a TV in the lobby." -- Al Spradling Jr., Cape Girardeau