Friday, November 22nd, 1963 at 10:30 AM, Pacific Standard Time, I was at my drawing board working on a technical literature project for the U.S. Navy.
I was a technical artist employed by a company in Glendale, California. One of our fellow artists excitedly rushed into our work area and shouted, “I just heard on the radio that our president was shot in Dallas!” We received this outcry with shock and disbelief. It was too incredible to be true! Within a couple minutes someone borrowed a radio from another section and we all sat motionless listening to a network radio newsman reporting the tragedy from Dallas.
A short while later, actually at 11 AM, the newsman [I seem to remember Walter Cronkite, although I'm not sure!] reported that President Kennedy was pronounced dead from an assassin’s bullets. We sat stunned, motionless. No one in our group could believe that JFK was dead… and by an assassin!
Perhaps, a half hour later, our supervisor, Len B., announced that all departments would be closed and Monday, would be declared a “Federal Day of Mourning.” I quickly drove the 30 minutes home to my small apartment in Hollywood and immediately turned on my black and white TV. I was glued to the TV, it seemed, day and night through the entire weekend and Monday. I witnessed on TV the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald; the amazing, unbelievable ease of Jack Ruby killing Oswald; the gut-wrenching sight of the horse-drawn caisson carrying the body of the President to the Capitol Rotunda in D.C.; the endless lines of people paying their respects to the fallen JFK; and watching the funeral of our beloved President with the emotions of wife, “Jackie,” Caroline and little “John John!”
This momentous, mind-boggling tragedy will be forever ingrained in this 79 year old mind’s memory along with the Japanese sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941!
By Norb Eglash (My Dad)
