Source: The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.迷利倉Nov. 17--Lynchburg resident Walter Fore was on the eighth hole at the Boonsboro Country Club, carrying golf bags for some of the city's top business executives, when the club professional came out to meet their foursome."He told us the president had gotten killed," said Fore, then a 23-year-old Marine veteran working as a caddy because he couldn't get a full-time job. The date was Nov. 22, 1963."I never will forget the look on Alvis Hylton's face," Fore said last week, speaking of the golf pro who delivered the news.The group, whose members Fore recalled as including Percy Burton, president of Craddock-Terry Shoe Corp., and three leaders in the foundry and construction businesses, proceeded to play the 9th hole."It still hadn't registered on us what had happened," Fore said.But they decided to leave the golf course after that hole. Most of the other golfers also were leaving.Many Lynchburg people had similar reactions that day, based on random newspaper interviews then, and memories that some longtime residents discussed last week:They were shocked and surprised to learn John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, but the event's real significance sank in much later.Fore recalls a loss of hope among the city's black community, which, he said, respected the Kennedys because of their concern for the working poor."We just sat around and moped," Fore said.Some Lynchburg residents were not dismayed, however.Elliot Schewel, who later would represent Lynchburg in the state Senate, vividly recalled a downtown businessman "who I don't like to mention, but I will."That merchant, who was in the usual lunchtime group at Patterson's Drug Store, across Main Street from Schewel's furniture business, "was rejoicing that he had been shot."This man who was a local businessman on Main Street was just so happy at the news," Schewel said, while declining to give the person's name. "He was a strong right-wing guy," said Schewel, a lifelong Democrat, community leader and benefactor.Schewel himself was "just stunned" at the Kennedy news, he said. "It was disbelief that it had happened."Lynchburg's Kennedy linkSix years earlier, Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, had attracted 1,400 Lynchburg residents for a speech he gave in the E.C. Glass auditorium.The Chamber of Commerce, sponsor of the event, had to rent the high school's space to meet an unexpected demand for tickets to the April 4, 1957 event.Kennedy delivered a hard-hitting speech that described his efforts in Congress to limit labor-union activities.He rebuffed local reporters' questions about his prospects as a 1960 presidential candidate, saying, "It's too early" to speculate.After the Dallas shooting, which occurred on a Friday, public officials in Lynchburg and around the state issued statements about their shock, concern and sympathy for the Kennedy family.Mayor William C. Vaughan declared Monday a day of mourning in the city, and asked downtown churches to ring their bells from 11:45 a.m. till noon, when Kennedy's funeral would begin in Washington, D.C.Schools, banks and the post office were closed.Lynchburg's morning newspaper, The News, called the shooting "a shock not only to this country but to the world" in an editorial, and said it posed several questions."Has it become necessary in this country for a president always to move about in an armored car?"And always to be protected in every way from the possibility of assassination?" the editorial asked.The editor also noted a trend in which presidents elected 20 years apart, at the turn of decades, died while in office: Abraham Lincoln, killed in 1865; James A. Garfield, slain in 1881; William McKinley, assassinat迷你倉d in 1901; Warren Harding, who died in 1923; and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in 1945 (after winning one of his presidential bids in 1940).The trend would be interrupted in 1981, when Ronald Reagan survived being shot by John Hinckley, thanks in part to swift reactions from Secret Service agents.Lynchburg's reflectionsTom Ledford, who was director of the LynchburgMuseum for 30 years, looks at the Kennedy assassination through an anthropologist's lens.Like almost everyone in America that day, Ledford can tell you where he was: students in his Jesuit high school in New Orleans were called into a chapel, where teachers "told us the president had been shot and died. We had a prayer service and went home."Now, Ledford wonders about the country's fascination with Kennedy."Every year, we go through this remembrance" of Kennedy events, Ledford said. "It's almost a ritual."I look for patterns in human behavior, and that certainly has become one in our country," Ledford said."To me, the irony of the assassination is that we have gotten nostalgic about it, and that is kind of puzzling," he said.Kennedy's death had a huge impact on America, in Ledford's view.Immediately after the shooting, people became "much more circumspect," Ledford said.The country watched on TV two days later as Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, and "we were all a little afraid," Ledford said.Fear was enhanced by memory of the Cuban missile crisis, in which Kennedy had called Russia's bluff in 1962, "and that was very scary," Ledford said. He recalled his family praying on its knees the night the U.S. Navy intercepted Russian vessels carrying missiles to Cuba.Subsequent events included the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April 1968 and the president's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, in June two months later.Afterward, "nothing was quite the way we thought it was," Ledford said.Had John F. Kennedy lived, Ledford said, "Knowing what we know now, Kennedy probably would have done something very different in Vietnam," instead of the heavy U.S. military involvement instituted by his successor, Lyndon Johnson."But maybe he would not have gotten as much done as Johnson did for civil rights, so that's a trade-off there," Ledford said.Other Lynchburg residents interviewed last week offered these memories:Flo Traywick, who later would become a Republican Party leader from Lynchburg, recalled that she heard Kennedy had been shot while she was shopping in Millner's, a clothing store on Main Street. "I thought, 'Isn't that too bad.' It took a while for it to sink in."Ann van de Graaf, a Lynchburg artist and LegacyMuseum director who grew up in Tanzania, said someone called her home in the city to say the president had been shot. "I just couldn't believe it. I said, 'Which president?' I couldn't believe it would be the president of the United States."Fore, whose memories of the day remain strong, remembers that the Boonsboro Country Club chef took him and other caddies to a bus stop in Peakland that afternoon so they could ride home."It was all over TV," Fore recalls. "It was one of our worst days, because I felt like this was a young man who really was going to bring us out of the kind of bondage we were still in as far as jobs and opportunities were concerned.""A lot of people felt bewildered," Fore said. "It was a day I will never forget."We all had so much hope in the Kennedys."Where were you?Dozens responded to The News & Advance's call for memories of that day, which will mark its 50th anniversary on Friday.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The News & Advance (Lynchburg, Va.) Visit The News & Advance (Lynchburg, Va.) at .newsadvance.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉
留言列表
