JFK

  Today, Friday, November 22nd, 2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the John F. Kennedy presidential assassination. Everyone of my era remembers where they were on that day. I was almost eleven, in the sixth grade with Mr. Wetherbee, one of the best teachers i ever had at any level. After we received the news we were dismissed from school. As we trooped downstairs in the two story building, we passed by all the teachers. I noticed my fourth grade teacher, a woman whom we thought of as an old battle axe, weeping.
    After we got on the busses I realized that our driver, had the radio on listening for news, a first. In those days few mothers worked so there was someone to receive us.
    Like so many others I accepted the findings of the Warren Commission ( named after the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at that time) that Oswald had acted alone. About twenty-five years later, after having been unable to shake pneumonia with several different medicines, I spent a week in bed reading half a dozen books on the assassination. At the end of the week I came to believe that Oswald had not acted alone and probably was not involved.
    Several historical ironies about the ramifications of JFK's death include that he had allowed the assassination of the South Vietnamese leader a few weeks earlier; that JFK would probably not have escalated the war as Johnson did, and probably would not have had a major expansion of the Federal welfare state as his successor initiated.