Terry Mosher
There have been and will be more features done on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened 50 years ago a week from today (Nov. 22). I’m not going to go into any detail here, or confirm to you again that I don’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president. It’s too late for that to do any good anymore. I’ll just say there were a lot of bad forces swirling around JFK at that time, for a variety of reasons, and there was a conspiracy that was successful in ending his life.
I just want those of you who were not born yet when it happened to know that no matter what you read in the coming week, no matter what you hear, and no matter what you see, there is no way you can sense or feel what we who lived through it sense or feel. It was as emotional devastating as you might feel times a thousand percent more.
On November 22, 1963 I was a junior at Western Washington State College (now WesternWashingtonUniversity) in Bellingham. I loved the college life and was living it up pretty well with courses in political science (I loved political theory), economics and history.
Lunch time was spent either at the Student Union or downtown Bellingham at Cap Hansen’s Tavern on Chestnut Street where for a buck you could get an unbelievably delicious Reuben sandwich with potato salad or chips and a schooner of beer.
Several of us would go to Cap’s and play cribbage while devouring our Reubens and scoffing down a schooner, and if we had an extra quarter two schooners (later in life I would take Mary there to get a Reuben and beer, although the Reubens by then were not as tasty).
Life was good. I was undefeated in Ping Pong at Western, and would remain that way through my five years there. I went to most of the basketball games at Sam Carver Gym, went to concerts and anything else that sparked my curiosity and blossoming intellect. It was a wonderful time.
I used to spend a lot of time at Wilson Library on campus either studying or browsing through the books in the biography section. I will also admit I sometimes would find a quiet corner in the bio section and get a few minutes of sleep.
Never could I fully explain to you how good it felt to be in school at Western. Those were my dark years (ages 13 through 25) and being at Western gave me some respite from the darkness, so I couldn’t wait to get there in the morning, and hated to leave in the afternoon.
So that is where things stood on that fateful day – November 22, 1963. I was in the Wilson Library and late that morning I decided to head over to the Student Union to join some friends at our usual table to discuss the usual topics – hockey and girls.
As I approached the exit I noticed numerous people running toward the Student Union. I was not much of a talker back then, especially to people I didn’t know, but something just didn’t seem right and as I walked out a girl came jogging past. It wasn’t like me to say anything, but I yelled to her, “What is going on?” She replied, “The President has been shot.”
John Kennedy
I immediately began running to the Student Union, which had several television sets, and for the next several hours hundreds of us students were glued in gloominess, knowing full well that we were witnessing something so historical in nature that we must never forget where we were when it all happened.
Sad to say, while I was not old enough in 1960 to vote I would not have voted for Kennedy. I was a Nixon man, the only one in our little car pool group. I was also the only non-Catholic and I stubbornly veered from my friends’ deep belief in JFK because I believed they were doing so only because he, too, was Catholic.
I was wrong, of course, to like Nixon. I have since learned as you have that he was tied into people like Jimmy Hoffa and others close to the Mafia. In fact, I’m beginning to believe he was tied in, or had advanced knowledge, of the JFK killing.
We have all learned a lot since that shooting. I know that JFK and the Kennedy men in general were not the nicest people, especially when it came to the treatment of women, and the old man, Joe Kennedy, was tied to more illegal things than should be allowed.
Still, that was a traumatic event in my life and millions of others. When you are as young as we were back then you don’t think these things could ever happen. But it did, and it changed my view on life and on politics – I lean left now – and left a scar that will never quite heal.