The day that never moves on ….
I was eight-years-old, home with the chicken pox. My great-grandmother was watching As The World Turns (ironically) on her birthday, Nov. 22, 1963. We watched the program be interrupted until finally, we heard, “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is dead.” The entire world stopped at that moment. The world skipped a beat and has never been the same. Literally, this event changed society for ever.
I’ve studied the life and death of President Kennedy for 53 years. I finally visited Dallas a few weeks ago with my son and friends. Dealey Plaza has an aura over it. It really does. We went into the book depository, now a museum called the 6th floor museum. How solemn it is. At the street, in the plaza and in the depository, people virtually whisper. No shouts, loud talking or rushing about.
I shared my take on who actually was behind it and how it happened with a man at Dealey Plaza who was selling literature at a table. He agreed with me. I thought little about him, until I went into the Dallas sphere and saw a digital documentary, including the man I met at the plaza. He was the secret agent, assigned to Jackie Kennedy, that leaped on the trunk of the car to push Mrs. Kennedy back into the seat and threw his body across the top of the trunk as a human shield. It took him 27 years to return. Now he stays and shares his story.
I have read so many books, and seen so many reports over the years about the conspiracies. I’ve looked at the archives of the Warren Report and discovered pictures I never wanted to see. I have interviewed and been the panel expert in media in Chattanooga (I have a lecture next month). After 53 years, I am still intrigued by what happened and how it could have happened. When you do your homework, it should have never happened. Everyone was at fault, including the Kennedy staff and John Kennedy’s faith in people in general, in Texas, though they were warned numerous times, Texas was a ‘hostile’ state and anything could happen.
There was the guns that were drawn in the surgery room, by secret service, when the Texas officials said the president’s body had to remain in Dallas for the homicide inquiry. The handles to the casket that had to be broken off and the casket turned, tilted and stood on end, to get it into Air Force One, through a door never build for a bronze casket. Lee Harvey Oswald’s attachments … to all kinds of people. In reality, he was no more than a zealous simpleton. He chased his tail, simply to be important. He could have never set this up the way it was.
Have you ever heard of the Secret Service conspiracy? Supposedly the Secret Service shot the president from the car behind him. The stories, go on and on. There is, in my opinion, ‘fact’ that President John Kennedy lost his life because of his family's behavior and decisions. John Kennedy was assassinated, because he was the head of the snake …. Only at that time.
Well, enough of that! It’s all written in history, in a thousand different versions. Still, the world has never been the same. A good man passed into the night. His mortality was at the expense of his end.
As is stated on the tour in Dallas …. Dealey Plaza is the only place on earth, where people come to see where time stood still. At Daily Plaza, it is always Nov. 22, 1963.
Pete Burnette
Chattanooga