Reporting the JFK Assassination:
‘No Miranda Rule, No PR People’
Fifty years on, journalists who were in Dallas that day, from Bob Schieffer to Jim Lehrer, recall the shock of the news, getting a call from Mrs. Oswald, and questioning the assassin.
As for me? I was a first year medical student in anatomy lab … dissecting my cadaver! We all went out into the corridor and sat on staircase listening to a radio. I do not remember much of that day, other than going to my parents home that night. My Dad was a closet Republican, the kind that claims to be a liberal but always find some reason to side with the Republicans. In Kennedy’s case, Dad somehow held a prejudice based on old Joe’s Nazism and the brothers once upon a time support for McCarthy.
I do not remember much of how that night went at home or anything much about the next day either, All that sticks to me are those stairs, the formaldehyde odor from the cadavers, and scenes from Dallas played over and over again.
Not long after, Bobbie and Dr. King died. By then I was married but I called home looking for emotional support I never got.
Damned shame you can’t spell assassination.