I got up early this morning. As I often do, I checked around the news and today came across the National Public Radio recordings of events of 22nd November 1963, which they have recently put up on their website. I listened for about ten minutes to the unedited tape of radio exchanges made during that day. The scratchy sounding exchanges are mainly of communications between the Situation Room at the White House and a flight between Honolulu and Japan containing six members of JFK’s cabinet and then later between the Situation Room, Andrews Air Force Base and the Air Force One plane which is bringing the president’s body back to Washington.
The voices relaying chilling news seem so calm to me but it must have been havoc and shock behind the scenes. First there is news that the president has been hit. The plane en route to Japan turns round and heads back to Honolulu. It is then directed to head straight back to Washington instead of to Dallas. Soon after, a very short stark message comes through from the Situation Room to say that the president is dead. No embellishment. He’s dead.
It seems almost like an afterthought on the radio message but someone on the plane comes on to ask where the Vice President is – he’s at Parkland Hospital in Dallas - and then a short time later he’s referred to as President Johnson. An air force general instructs the crew at Andrews Air force base to have a forklift ready to transport the casket to and from Air Force One. The man responds that they’ll have a forklift or a group of men to handle that. This is about the time that I decide not to listen any more. At least this isn’t the Zupruder film, they seem to show that over and over and I can’t watch that any more.
I’m not a big fan of Kennedy and his presidency, particularly his foreign policy. However he did seem to capture a spirit that no American president has done since. I recall as a child going to stay in my aunt’s house in the north of Ireland and I remember seeing a picture of JFK right up there on the wall next to the Pope.
