Today's the day when, I guess, we're all supposed to answer the musical question, "Where were you when you heard JFK had been shot?" I was in Mr. Totman's third period math class at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High in West Los Angeles. The principal, Mr. Campbell, came on the public address system and told us in very cautious, non-alarmist terms what was being reported on the news. For the rest of the day, there was no other topic and no grasping of the situation.
Mr. Totman was the kind of math teacher who was always looking for reasons to talk about things other than math. His mind wasn't on Algebra and he could tell ours weren't, either so we all sat around, pointlessly speculating on what it all meant. Fourth period for me was English and we also just sat around, pointlessly speculating on what it all meant. I recall that our English teacher, Mr. Cline, didn't have any more idea than we did. Then after fourth period was Lunch and again, a lot of sitting around, wondering what had happened and what would happen.
At the time, there was a rule at Emerson that students could not bring radios to school, and the officials had been enforcing the rule with great vigor, seizing radios and punishing their possessors. You would have had an easier time carrying heroin at my junior high school. But suddenly at lunchtime, several students were openly playing news broadcasts on their little transistors and not only was no one confiscating but teachers were among the many crowding around to listen. I went to Mr. Campbell's office and suggested they pipe the radio news coverage over the P.A. system and this was done.
There was a very real fear that the shooting of Kennedy was Step One in a dastardly plot that would lead to more assassinations, invasions, nuclear bombings, whatever. Imaginations ran rampant and even after it became apparent that other catastrophes were not on tap, imaginations continued to rampage about whodunnit. They still do.
For a time in the late sixties and early seventies, I joined the throng that believed in a conspiracy. I even attended a conference of "buffs" (as they sometimes call themselves) and found about 90% of them to have some sort of obsessive, emotional need to defend wacko theories to the death, even sometimes multiple wacko theories that contradicted each other. But around 10% made good, rational arguments against the Warren Commission and I have since seen those arguments grow ever less compelling.
I eventually came around to the opinion that the "lone nut" explanation made the most sense. Yes, there are anomalies and oddments but in this country, we decide murder trials by the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." We do not demand that every evidentiary point be nailed down because we acknowledge that almost every case does have anomalies and oddments; that if the defense digs hard enough, they can always find something that can be framed as a counter-argument. Reluctantly, for I love to see government lying and cover-ups exposed, I had to conclude that Oswald acted alone, that the single-bullet theory that I had once denounced as science-fiction was probably so, and that Jack Ruby was just a deranged night club owner.
I also concluded that it was pointless to try and convince anyone else of this; that those who had an opinion had already had it bronzed and placed on the mantel. Too many had too much invested in not believing "the official version," and as I have a certain admiration for skepticism, I don't know that this is a bad thing. So I am absolutely not attempting to get you to see it my way; just reporting that I moved from one viewpoint to another. Most people, I am well aware, do not believe it…but they also do not believe in any other particular theory. They believe "they" killed Kennedy without really identifying who "they" are. I'm afraid that is how it will forever be in the history books.
Lastly, I came to the conclusion that the death of John F. Kennedy did not mean the end of Camelot. The more I read about Kennedy, the less I think of him, except perhaps as a symbolic figure. If his assassination plunged America into a downward spiral, that was largely because we allowed it to…a mistake we sometimes seem to be making, though not as badly, regarding 9/11. I think the country is strong enough to survive the murder of one man or 3,000 men and women. Still, we sometimes forget that, and it is that forgetfulness that does the real damage.