The Anniversary of the Assassination

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The Qantas plane we were to transfer to for Brisbane Sunday night had a mechanical error and the airline needed to haul some parts in. They put us up in the Hyatt at DFW and paid for our dinner, breakfast and lunch until our rescheduled flight Monday night at 8:30 p.m.

My room had a giant eight-person conference table in the centre, which I thought was cute.

Met Natalie Taylor, an ambassador for AFAR travel magazine who was also travelling from Toronto on this junket.

Because we had a full day to kill in Dallas and we wanted to escape the constant barrage of Rob Ford coverage on CNN, we took a cab into downtown Dallas to check out the preparations for the 50^th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

A 25-min. cab ride later, we were in Dealey Plaza, swarming with reporters speaking to people who wanted to tell their stories about where they were, what they were doing when the president was shot.

CBS News reporter Steve Pickett told us he’d been speaking with a number of people that day.

“It depends on the age,” he said. “People want to see the site where the president lost his life. Most people who aren’t from that era, they’ve heard about it. All these TV shows that are on right now documenting the history.”

“The people that were from that era, it takes them back to a very troubling time,” Pickett explained. “This was very hard on the city that developed a horrible reputation by virtue of the shooting down of a president. Dallas was synonymous with this for a long time.”

However, the most disturbing thing Pickett heard that day was a guy in his truck stopping in front of the infamous grassy knoll near where JFK was shot.

“He said, ‘Should’ve killed the bitch, too,’” Pickett said, rolling his eyes.

Stay classy.

Natalie and I toured the memorial (resembling a giant white stone Lego block) and the JFK Museum.

I was taken aback by the Sixth Floor Museum, the site – formerly the Dallas Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor window (or not, according to conspiracy theroists).

The audio tour was emotional and fascinating.

I was not alive during that era, but watching others in the room tear up viewing footage of Walter Cronkite’s announcement Kennedy had been shot struck a chord with me.

There was an Associated Press teletype machine in there. A draft of a news story had the final sentence (which an editor later crossed out):

“The president and his assassin died in the same hospital, perhaps on the same table.”

And I agree with Natalie Manzocco from 24 Hours, who eloquently put it:

“THAT KICKER IS AMAZING. WHY WOULD YOU CUT THAT?”

Outside on the Grassy Knoll, I met Richard Gann, 65.

On Nov. 22, 1963 – the day Kennedy was shot – Gann lived in Denison, a small Texas suburb 70 miles north of Dallas. He was 15.

“I remember it was 12:40 p.m. and my neighbour came to the house, shouting, ‘The president’s been shot!’” he said.

“I was watching all afternoon the coverage on TV. I’ll never forget what I felt. I couldn’t return to school, I was so upset.”

The senior also remarked how impressed he was of the news coverage at the time, especially how reporters were able to publish so much detailed information about Oswald so quickly, in a time when Google and Facebook and other social media tools weren’t available.

It was a quite a special thing being able to share in that experience so close to the 50^th anniversary this Friday.

Two hours before we land in Brisbane. Because Natalie and I are arriving a day late, we’ve got to hit the ground running. That means flying to Cairns, getting picked up, dumping our bags off and taking a connecting ferry to Fitzroy Island. Looking forward to seeing the turtle rehabilitation centre.

That’s the spirit of travel, though. If we weren’t delayed, we would’ve missed out on the JFK stuff, which feels really special. I’m glad things unfolded this way.