Tuesday, November 22, 1983: My father went to work again all day. He must have felt better after his remedy and sleep the night before. Honestly, I cannot remember a single day growing up as a kid when my father missed work. Whether he just wasn’t feeling up to par, or if he had a few too many drinks the night before, he ALWAYS went to work.
That night, however, I remember him going to bed earlier than he usually did, saying that his body felt achy. Again, the picture of our large kitchen comes to mind, and I can see my mother and I there, up late. Mom was ironing, as she did quite often at night, while I sat at the kitchen table, and we were chatting.
Suddenly, there was my dad, standing at the doorway of the kitchen, in the tiny hallway off the bathroom. He looked slightly pale, and he was sweating a little, rubbing his left hand around to his back from his left side and then to the front again while leaning on the door jamb with his other arm.
“I don’t know…” he said… “I don’t know what’s going on… now I feel it in my back too…”
I’m sure there was the brief suggestion of maybe going to the hospital emergency room, although I cannot confirm that memory for sure. But I do know that my dad would have put a stop to that at once – no, that is so totally not necessary, I’ll be okay, I just need to go back to bed. Which he did. I do recall my mother telling him, “If you’re still not feeling well tomorrow, I’m calling the doctor…”
60 years ago today – on Friday, November 22, 1963 – President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his wife attended a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Fort Worth, Texas at 8am. It was a lighthearted event, with the President being gifted a Stetson hat to offer “some protection against the rain” and all the women in attendance excitedly awaiting the appearance of the First Lady, and to see what Jackie was wearing. After arriving a few moments later, Jackie appeared wearing a pink Chanel suit, along with her signature “pillbox” hat.
The breakfast ended at 10:30am and, after a short rest, the President and First Lady boarded Air Force One for the 13-minute flight to Love Field in Dallas. After landing and briefly greeting the crowds, they climbed into an open car with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife. Along the route, Mrs. Connally commented to the President that “you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Triumph would turn to ultimate tragedy mere moments later when shots rang out and JFK was struck down. Jackie’s pink Chanel suit, the hit of the breakfast just a few hours earlier, was now stained with her husband’s blood.
I was just under 3 years old when JFK was assassinated, so I obviously don’t remember it. My parents had a book they bought, which commemorated the tragedy of his death, entitled “Four Days”. It was a full-color, hardcover book, and I remember looking through it all the time as soon as I became old enough, fascinated by the story and the color photographs. To this day, when I watch film about that day and see the smiling President and his pink suit-clad wife, I want to scream out to them, “Don’t go to Dallas, don’t get in that car…”
I will always remember my mother declaring about that weekend in 1963 “it was like the end of the world…”
Almost 20 years to the day later, we would be shocked by our own unexpected loss and endure our own “Four Days”…
Oddly Enough 