Fifty years ago today the tolling of a bell momentarily
paralyzed the news room. It was the bell on the wire service machine. It
signaled a rare “Flash,” a designation reserved for the most urgent stories.
The staff
of The Honolulu Advertiser didn’t want to believe the report on the wire, that
President John F. Kennedy had been fatally shot in Texas.
Three years
earlier both Kennedy and his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, had campaigned
in the 50th state of Hawaii. The population was small, but statehood was new,
and journalists from all over were happy to dateline their work from Waikiki or
Kona. When the votes were counted, 50.03% went to Kennedy and 49.97% to Nixon.
During the campaign I interviewed both candidates when they
visited the Big Island, where I was editor of the local daily newspaper. When
that heartbreaking flash came on November 22, 1963 I was Sunday editor of the
morning paper in Honolulu.
Almost
everybody took the assassination personally. Kennedy was a personal president,
in the minds of countless Americans.
President
Kennedy was scheduled to move on from Dallas to Austin to address the Texas
Democratic State Committee. I received the text of that address from the White
House, framed it as a minor memento of that terrible time.
The
President was not finished. He had planned to speak that night about the linkage of Texas and the
Democratic Party in “an indestructible alliance.”
Alas,
alliances come and go. Religions come and go, and so governments. But the
mystery of human behavior hangs on.
