10
Tuesday, November 22. 1988 / University Daily Kansan
JFK
Continued from p. 1
"We left to go to a bar to see if we could find a story on TV. We just couldn't believe it," Dutton said, now an editor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Returning to KU on Saturday, Dutton said she remembered that the longues in her sorority were told with people watching television.
Francis Heller, professor emeritus of political science, also remembers that Friday.
"The weather had cleared but nobody seemed to notice." Dutton said. "I remember a heavy sense of gloom."
Heller said he learned of the assassination after eating dinner with a colleague.
"As we were crossing Mississippi Street a car came along with a student who knew Professor Barton the teller. He answered why he appeared so pale. The student answered, 'the president has been shot.'
"I can't think of any other day when everyone's mood was so affected."
Heller said that he remembered the crowd that was packed in Hoch Auditorium the next Monday for a convocation commemorating Kenta-
"It was so crowded that people were standing." Heller said. "It was very emotional but very appropriately done."
Calder Pickett, professor emeritus of journalism, said the convocation was one of the most memorable occasions in University history.
"It was hard to take. Everyone was quite overwhelmed at the statements," Pickett said. "The most moving part was when the congregation sang the 'Navy Hymn.'"
"I could not see how anyone could sing, I was too choked up and
crying."
At the time, Pickett, was editorial page adviser for the University Daily Kansan. He recalled that he had been in the Hawk's Nest when someone ran in and said that he'd better get back to the Kansan because the president had been shot.
The newsroom became hectic and frantic as it soon filled with students and faculty. Kett said. "It was a bit of a delay so the toy could be assembled.
story club be assigned.
W. Clarke Wescoe, chancellor in
1963, delivered the address at
the convocation. And John Stuckey
read statements on behalf of the
students.
The following paragraph was taken from Stuckey's statements at the convocation:
Dutton said, "I found myself very impressed and moved by his talk. It was an auditorium packed full to hear an ordinary person speak about the president we had lost."
"Finally, I realized that this is the first national tragedy that most of my generation can remember. Few of us were born when Pearl Harbor was attacked. We were, at best, infants during World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt's death most of us still too young to realize its significance. Then came the Korean Conflict, which we really cannot recall with any certainty.
"All these crises occurred over a relatively short span of years before we reached a rational age. From that time until now, although the news has been occupied with tensions and conflicts, nothing has happened to really shake the American people in a manner similar to the violent and terrible assassination of our President."
Dallas prepares for anniversary Hundreds to remember JFK
The Associated Press
Kennedy was traveling in a motorcade through downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when shots rang out across Dealey Plaza and wounded him. Today, a stone slab inscribed with Kennedy's name and surrounded by partial walls stands near the site as a memorial.
DALLAS — Hundreds of people came to the John F. Kennedy Memorial in downtown Dallas yesterday, as the city where he was killed 25 years ago prepared to mark the anniversary with private remembrances but no official ceremony
It was to this slab that visitors came yesterday to pay tribute to a president some of them were too young to remember.
"It's something that I can tell my kids what happened," he said. "I'm going to tell them that 25 years ago this event changed the history of the United States, the history of the world."
Ernest Saucedo of Dallas wasn't born when the president was assassinated but visited the memorial anyway.
traul Miranda, 40, was in Dallas for a convention when he recalled the anniversary and decided to visit the memorial before going home to Los Angeles.
"I just made it my business to come by," said Saucedo, 20. "I understand he was a good president. I just feel I needed to come by. This is history."
history On Sunday, 30 former Green Berets and 150 onlookers gathered at the
A round table discussion is planned for today at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was taken after being shot. Five doctors and nurses who were at the hospital when the president arrived will take part in the discussion.
memorial to remember Kennedy.
The members of the U.S. Army
Special Forces wore their berets
the ones Kennedy had authorized in
1961—as they saluted four wreaths
laid at the memorial.
cade
The attention given to the 25th anniversary has aroused more interest than usual in the site, said Gary Mead, who drove one of several tour buses that stopped at the memorial yesterday.
the assassin at Dealey Plaza, a small American flag with a bouquet of flowers lay in front of a plaque, about 200 yards from the memorial and across the street from the Texas School Book Depository Building, where authorities say Oswald fired from a sixth-floor window into Kennedy's motorcade.
the discussion.
Dallas-area painters, poets, performance artists and musicians plan a series of exhibits and live performances today at the Texas Theater, where assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended only hours after the assassination.
"They're very much aware of it," Mead said. "They don't want to miss this part of the tour."
Darrell Jordan, a Dallas native, was making his first visit to Dealey Plaza. He spent about an hour yesterday touring the areas.
Poll rates Kennedy as best president
called But Kennedy's exalted place in history rests more on his potential and his personal qualities than on his accomplishments in office. In the national survey he was rated far higher on charisma than on other attributes.
NEW YORK — Americans rank John F. Kennedy as the nation's greatest president, remembering him with a striking sense of loss a quarter-century after his assassination, a Media General-Associated Press poll has found.
The Associated Press
Slightly more than one-fifth of the 1,125 adults surveyed picked Kennedy as the greatest U.S. president, more than named any other Only Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln came close in popularity.
popularity.
Among all respondents, a plurality
Kennedy as a good president,
not a great one. Still, a
majority said they believed that
Most striking, however, was the depth of feeling associated with the slain president. More than six in 10 respondents said they still felt a personal loss from Kennedy's assassination, including many who were children or were not yet born in 1963. Among his contemporaries, seven in 10 feel a loss.
nearly served nearly three years before he was killed Nov. 22, 1963. Twenty-five years later, his name is invoked and his words are quoted by politicians seeking to assume his mantle of popularity.
had he lived and served a second term, the United States would be a better place today.
In another gauge, the poll asked if respondents remembered where they were when they heard Kennedy had been killed. Of those 30 and older now — meaning they were at least 5 years old then more than 90 percent said yes.
Continued from p. 1
CAMELOT
Cuba, and he initiated a limited nuclear test ban agreement with Moscow
Heller attended the address that then-Senator Kennedy gave to a capacity crowd in Hoch Auditorium in 1957.
"It went over tremendously well. There was something energetic about the man. He was someone who said 'yes' to the world." Heller said.
Heller said that Kennedy's Camelot image survived about five years after his death.
"The story of Camelot is one inspired vision which fails, but for a short moment there was a dream," Heller said.
"After his assassination, it became impossible to say anything against him," Stuckey said, now the director of academic computing at Northeastern University in Boston.
death.
John Stuckey, senior at KU in 1963, said that everyone became a Kennedy supporter after his death.
"I was a big supporter of him. A lot of people who would not have defined themselves on the Thursday before he was assassinated as a Kennedy supporter, now would."
a memoir. "In the 1960s, we saw a spark that we haven't seen in the presidency since then."
"Today's generation has heard how young and vigorous Kennedy was," he said. "As events go beyond one's experience, people have to have a simplified explanation of it. The details that complicate the picture are gotten rid of."
Gretchen Crites, Wichita sophmore, said that recent information has somewhat tarnished her image of Kennedy.
"However, I still have a positive image of him that I got from the media and history books." Crites said.
said.
Theodore Wilson, professor of history, said that the positive text-book image of Kennedy would probably continue for another 10 years.
"I'm not surprised to hear the students react to the continuation of the Camelot myth," Wilson said,
"which clearly is a myth; he was not a very good president."
"Many of us grew up during the time with Eisenhower as a backdrop," he said. "Kennedy looks good in comparison with what we had, and a great many of the students today pick up on that."
Kennedy's election was the first to be played out on television and his boyish good looks and glamorous family excited viewers and brought the word "charisma" into vogue.
Calder Pickett, professor emeritus of journalism, said that he had a great deal of admiration for Kennedy and he thought there was a kind of legend associated with him today.
"I don't think kids know enough about him today. He was a young guy who caught the attention of kids in the 1960s." Picktall said. "He was someone the kids could look at.
look a bit.
"He was a war hero and a handsome athlete. He had a beautiful wife, cute kids and a brother who was a war hero who had been killed," he said.
In the aftermath of the assassination, Kennedy's popularity reached heights surpassed in the century before only by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
However, in more recent years, the Kennedy image has crumbled a bit with reports of extramarital meetings of meetings with a Maria boss.
John G. Clark, professor of history, said that he thought less of Kennedy now then he did then.
"After his death he was blown up to be some super person with all the good values. No one knew how dishonest or nical he had Clark said."
been, Clark said.
The Kennedy myth that lived after his death has been tarnished since the 1970s because of the fact that Kennedy increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and because his economic views have since been questioned, Clark said.
"He didn't really leave a legacy because he was not there long enough, but that's not to say he wouldn't have." Clark said. "Kennedy had that charisma that it takes to guarantee him a place in history."
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