My vague recollection is that we in the Band class at Broad Ripple H.S., on Friday afternoon on November 22, 1963, were first informed over the school's loudspeaker system that JFK was now dead. And, upon hearing the news, nearly all the school band members seemed shocked, stunned or surprised. But I can't recall anyone in the Band class being so enamored with JFK that they began to cry or weep, after hearing the news.
I do recall, though, that when three or four of the band members, who I think were some guys who were part of the drum section of the band, began to laugh or cheer, Mr. Decker, the Band class teacher/school band director--despite having likely been someone who voted for Nixon in 1960 and who was probably some kind of Eisenhower-type "moderate" Republican in his political beliefs--reprimanded them for not responding to the news of JFK's death in a solemn way.
Like most Democrats and most Republican party supporters, as well as most political independents, in the USA in the early 1960's, before LBJ escalated the Vietnam war, Mr. Decker felt that, even if a U.S. citizen disliked an elected U.S. President's policies or political views, to not also be saddened if that U.S. President was eliminated like JFK had been, reflected an unpatriotic and excessively politically partisan mentality.
I forget whether or nor we were all dismissed early from school after news came of JFK's elimination in Dallas, Texas. But I do recall sitting next to one of the other Band class and band members, a soft-spoken, friendly guy whose parents had moved to Indianapolis from Des Moines, Iowa, on the public transit bus going back down College Avenue from the high school.
He was not as politically liberal as was I (who was then still not yet a radical leftist politically). But both he and I speculated, on the bus, that JFK likely had been eliminated by some white racist or right-wing extremist group or individuals in Dallas. And neither he nor I even considered the possibility that any U.S. government agency could have been involved in any plot to eliminate JFK in Dallas.
Of course, after I arrived home and began watching the U.S. Establishment's network television news departments' non-stop coverage of the historical events being broadcasted over the next three or four days, I--like everyone else I ever personally discussed what had happened to JFK in Dallas with, until the spring of 1967--almost immediately fell for the Establishment media's official version of how JFK was eliminated:
"An ex-Marine, named Lee Harvey Oswald, who--after becoming a Marxist and defecting to the Soviet Union and marrying a Russian wife--had become disillusioned with the Soviet system and returned to the USA. But after returning to the USA, Oswald had joined the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, to support the `dictatorial' Communist regime of Cuba; and, all alone, had eliminated JFK and wounded the governor of Texas, John Connally, by shooting a rifle from the 6th floor of the Texas Depository building in which he worked, in order to earn a famous place in history. And, after eliminating JFK, Oswald had shot and eliminated a Dallas policeman named Tippit, before being arrested by Dallas police inside a Dallas movie theater; into which he had entered rapidly, without buying a ticket, in a failed attempt to hide from police inside the movie theater."
And even though I was watching TV at home when it showed Jack Ruby eliminating Oswald in the Dallas Police Station basement on the Sunday morning following JFK's elimination, like everyone else I ever personally discussed the November 22 to November 25, 1963 events until the spring of 1967, I also fell for the Establishment media's official story that the only reason Jack Ruby eliminated Oswald was because of "his spontaneous grief over JFK's death" and "to spare Jackie Kennedy the pain of having to come back to Dallas and testify at Oswald's trial."
In retrospect, probably the main reason I continued to believe in the subsequent Warren Commission Report's similar version of how JFK was eliminated and why Jack Ruby eliminated Oswald, even after I realized, by the end of 1965, that the Establishment media's anti-communist liberal news departments' journalists were falsely asserting that the U.S. government was "defending freedom for the South Vietnamese people from Communist tyranny," by escalating its military intervention in Vietnam in early 1965, was that neither RFK nor Teddy Kennedy publicly questioned the Establishment's official story or the Warren Commission Report, during the 1960's.
I, perhaps falsely, automatically assumed, prior to the spring of 1967, that if the questions about the official story that Mark Lane, Dorothy Kilgallen, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and others were raising about the official story were valid questions, then either RFK nor Teddy Kennedy would also be out there publicly pushing for a new investigation by 1967.
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