60 years ago: Assassination of President Kennedy left county residents stunned, saddened

TUSCARAWAS COUNTY ‒ It has been 60 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. For many people who were alive at the time, the memories remain fresh of where they were when they heard the news and how they felt about his death.

The Times-Reporter asked area residents what they remember about that time.

RANDY FEEMSTER, New Philadelphia

My grandmother, Genevieve Kennedy, adored John Kennedy. Her married name was Kennedy, so that might have been one of the hooks for her, but she just thought they were just the greatest. So, we watched the Nixon-Kennedy debate on an old black and white Muntz TV. She was just hooked on every word that they were saying.

On Sept. 27, 1960, my grandmother asked my mother if I could go with her to the auditorium in Canton. We listened to John Kennedy speak that evening. I could feel the excitement in the room, even at 11 years old. It was like people wanted to jump up and down in their seats, they were so excited. After it was over, we walked up the steps and on to the stage. We got up to Kennedy and he shook her hand and was talking to her. I reached up while they were shaking hands, and I got his finger, and I wiggled his little finger. He glanced at me and smiled. It was a really memorable moment for me.

Then on Nov. 22, 1963, I was sitting in Summit Grade School in Canton. The principal came on the speaker and said there were some events going on in Dallas, Texas, that we should hear. I turned sideways in my seat because I was getting a little emotional. When I went home, my grandmother was just hysterical about it.

BERLINDA ARTZNER-GORDON, Dover

At the time of Kennedy's assassination in 1963, she was a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. She had to fly home to Tuscarawas County because she was in pain due to a kidney stone. While she was recovering at her parent's house in New Philadelphia, when she watched the news of his death on TV. "It was a tragic event," she said.

RICHARD KASER, Sugarcreek

I had just turned 11 in August of that year, so this was a time in my life when I was just waking up to politics. The early '60s were turbulent times, and the news was brought into our living rooms by TV.  I can remember watching the reports the previous year on the nuclear threat that is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And I remember JFK speaking to the nation about it. As a child I was terrified. My parents brought home plans from the Tuscarawas County Fair on how to build a bomb shelter. And it seemed to me like it was JFK who saved us in the end. The March on Washington had also been that summer, so in addition to the Cold War there were also racial tensions boiling over in the country.

For summer vacation that year, my dad had taken us to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C., where we visited Ford's Theatre. So I had also just learned the history of a previous U.S. president's assassination.

With all that as background, on Nov. 22, 1963 (it was a Thursday), I was sitting in Mr. Warren's sixth grade glass at Third Street elementary school in Sugarcreek. I can remember both the the U.S. flag ‒ it now had 50 stars ‒ hanging above the chalk boards at the front of the room and the big round clock on the wall. I think it was about 2:30 or 2:45 when an announcement came over the intercom that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. We were sent home early, and as it turned out there would be no school the next day or the following Monday, when the funeral occurred.

Just as TV had served as my window on the world for the Cuban Missile Crisis the prior year and the March on Washington that summer, I can remember lying on my belly on the living room floor staring up at the TV for the next four days. We saw it play out live and uncensored.  (It was the only thing on all three channels.)

The very famous images of Jackie Kennedy, LBJ and JFK Jr. saluting the flag were all televised live.  I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. I watched the funeral procession go down Pennsylvania Avenue and into the Capitol, places we had visited earlier that year. We had even gone on a tour of the Kennedy White House. So, it all seemed very personal and very close to home.  And tragic.

Quite a shock to see a hero like the president of the United States gunned down. This after all was the man who had saved me ‒ had saved all of us ‒ from nuclear annihilation, only the year before. And Jackie Kennedy. Also, a hero, dressed first in her bloody clothes and then draped in black, leading the nation in mourning.

I clipped the newspapers and made a scrapbook of the event, knowing even as a child I was witnessing something historic and important. And to this day, I am still that child lying on my stomach watching the story unfold on TV.  As for the scrapbook, it disintegrated, a victim of school glue.

SHIRLEY HOMAN, Dover

I was working at the Mineral City Post Office, and I was called to lower the flag to half-mast. So that's always brilliant in my mind. I watched the news when I got home. I remember the funeral and the little boy (JFK Jr.) with the salute.

PAUL BEITZEL, New Philadelphia

I think it was a sad day for the people of America when a United States president was assassinated. It was really a bad thing we have to think about. I was more or less shocked when I heard the news.

JEANNIE MANINI MICHEL, Dover

“Your kind prayers are requested for the repose of the souls of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Anna Vesco Manini,” the priest intoned, and we all knelt. It was Sunday, Nov. 24, 1963, two days after the president was killed and one day after my 39-year-old mother, Anna, died.

On Friday, Nov. 22, my brother and I were staying at our aunt and uncle’s home in the Maple Grove neighborhood of Uhrichsville. We’d been there since my mother’s (minor elective) surgery on Tuesday the 18th, from which she never regained consciousness.

It was warm for November, so I walked down a lane lined with mostly leafless trees to a mom & pop gas station/store, whose main attraction was several cages of squirrels. As I stood mindlessly watching their antics, the owner came out and said to me “You poor thing ‒ first your mom and now this.”

Before I could ask what she meant, I saw my aunt running down the lane. I had never seen her move that fast, so when she reached me, I asked “Did mom die?” She, usually undemonstrative, put her arm around me and said through tears, “Come back to the house. They’ve shot the president.”

The rest of that day was pretty much of a blur, just like the black and white television coverage. I’d had a cold and cough, and having been liberally dosed with cough medicine was in kind of a fog. I remember a feeling of unreality, and that everyone was absolutely horrified such a thing could have happened. The oft-repeated remark was “What’s this country coming to?” I also remember Walter Cronkite’s flat tone and expression as he announced the president’s death, and the sadness in his eyes when he removed his glasses.

Early Saturday morning my aunt woke me from a sound, cough-syrup induced sleep. Again I asked “Did mom die?” She answered, “You need to get up and get dressed. Your dad is coming to talk to you and your brother” ‒ an affirmative, if evasive answer. Dad confirmed our worst fear ‒ mom had indeed died earlier that morning, just two weeks before her 40th birthday.

The rest of the weekend and the next week were filled with funeral arrangements ‒ making and attending them for Mom and watching the president’s. Sixty years later, I still cannot keep those two tragic deaths separate in my mind.

DON FOLTZ, Dover

I was a student at Ohio State University, living in an apartment. I heard it on the TV or radio. Then the following Sunday I went to church down at King Avenue Methodist Church in Columbus, and you could hardly get in the doors. The place was just full. People were really stunned about the assassination at the time.

Reach Jon at 330-364-8415 or at jon.baker@timesreporter.com.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Tuscarawas County residents remember the day JFK was assassinated