Forty years ago, the nation brimmed with hope and anticipation
behind a young, charismatic president.
Three bullets later, many of those hopes perished alongside that
leader.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy 40 years ago this Saturday
remains the defining moment in the lives of many Americans.
So profound was the event that it has become a cliche to say
everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when
they heard the news.
David Lowenstein, director of the Central Ticket Office, was a
fourth-year student at UCLA in 1963.
“I was in Kerckhoff Hall … sitting in the rally
committee’s office when someone walked down the hall and said
that Kennedy had been shot,” Lowenstein said. “I was
shocked.”
A wave of grief swept across the country and immediately shut
down the UCLA campus.
“Half-finished homecoming floats lay deserted on Trotter
Field,” said an article in the Daily Bruin the day after the
assassination.
Then-Chancellor Franklin Murphy canceled all classes and
university activities that day.
Homecoming was canceled that year, and the football game between
UCLA and USC was postponed.
“The mood of the campus was extremely somber,”
Lowenstein said.
The rest of the nation expressed similar shock and sadness upon
hearing the news. But the initial grief was quickly replaced with a
sense of uneasiness and uncertainty about the future of the United
States.
“We were very concerned about where the country would be
headed,” said Berky Nelson, director of the Center for
Student Programming.
Many Americans believed Kennedy would pull the nation out of
Vietnam, but with a new leader on his way to the helm, the United
States’ future in Southeast Asia was unknown.
Nelson, who served as an assistant history professor before his
current stint, said while many Americans looked upon Kennedy in a
favorable light, some segregationists in the South were pleased
with the assassination.
Kennedy was becoming more active in pushing civil rights
legislation and angered many people with his race views in a time
of extreme segregation.
But it was the Cold War that shaped Kennedy the most as a
political leader.
The failed Bay of Pigs invasion embarrassed the Kennedy
administration, but the subsequent redemption with the Cuban
Missile Crisis defined the Kennedy presidency.
Kennedy displayed his political might in a showdown with the
Soviet Union during this crisis, and the American people admired
him for it.
Shortly before 1 p.m. in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was
struck down by self-proclaimed Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald. In about
nine seconds, Oswald ended a life and a presidency from the sixth
floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
And the nation was thrown into a state of disbelief.
As reports spread, nearly every class, meeting and athletic
event across the United States was put on hold.
John Sandbrook, special assistant to the executive dean of the
College of Letters & Science who came to UCLA in 1967,
remembers sitting in his Catholic seminary studying for priesthood
when he found out about the shooting.
“In the middle of class, the rector came in and said that
the president had been shot,” Sandbrook said, recalling the
immediacy with which the news spread.
Forty years later, the shock has worn off, but the mourning of
the man has manifested into a multitude of tributes, television
shows and commemorative Web sites.
The History Channel, CNN, ABC and Court TV are a few of the
television stations airing special programming to commemorate the
anniversary.
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, however,
decided not to hold an official ceremony.
“We will just let it be a somber day,” said Ann
Scanlon, spokeswoman for the JFK Library and Museum.
UCLA has no official events planned to observe the
anniversary.