~by Denise O’Brien Van
About 12:45 on Friday afternoon, I’ll be back on the University of Iowa campus, reliving what happened to me as a 21-year-old college junior who just happened to turn on her radio and hear horrifying news: President John F. Kennedy has been killed by an assassin’s bullets in Dallas, Tex. I’ve been there every Nov. 22 for the past 50 years.
The radio report was unconfirmed. Beneath gray and rainy November skies, I’ll retrace my walk down Iowa City’s Washington Street hill from my sorority house to campus, deciding that after my 1:15 psychology lecture in McBride Hall’s 350-seat auditorium, I’ll head over to the Daily Iowan newspaper to verify the radio bulletin: Reports of what has happened will be clacking on the Associated Press wire machine in the DI newsroom. I’ll believe it when I read the wire.
In the lecture hall, the prof appears at his lectern, and asks, “Is he dead?”
“Dead. Dead. Dead,” echos in response.
He dismisses the hundreds of students. I run across the Pentacrest and down another hill to the Journalism Building, where the second-floor DI newsroom is controlled chaos.
I don’t need to check the wire to know that JFK is dead. The newspaper’s staff is putting together an “extra” that will hit the streets in late afternoon. I’m not a staff member yet, and I’m too shy to offer to help. On the way back to the sorority house, I detour to St. Mary’s Catholic Church to say an “Our Father” and a “Hail Mary.” Dozens of other college kids kneel with me.
That evening, I do something I’ve never done before: I make a costly long-distance call to my parents in Jefferson. I want to hear their voices, and give and receive reassurance and comfort in the midst of the vast grief our devout Irish Catholic and loyal Democratic family is experiencing.
And Saturday’s home football game has been cancelled. I had a date for the game, and I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing Notre Dame play the Hawkeyes. Most Irish-Americans at that time were Notre Dame fans, and I was torn between loyalties to both teams. It would be another 30 years before I finally see the Fighting Irish play.
The rest of that rainy November weekend and the following Monday are hazy. Blurry hours of watching the single black-and-white TV set in my sorority house with weeping friends –the constant replay of the awful event in Dallas, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald before our very eyes on Sunday morning; the solemn Requiem Mass; the stately parade of world leaders behind the funeral cortege; the stoic grief of Jacqueline Kennedy; the lighting of the eternal flame in Arlington Cemetery as darkness fell in Washington, D.C.
We witnessed what was for most of us the first real tragedy of our young lives. In the years to follow, many shockingly similar events would buffet us–and be televised–but this is the one vividly imprinted in our memories. We all know exactly where we were on Nov. 22, 1963.
