Scarce a mention about the date and the terrible event that happened in and to our country on that date in 1962. Now, it's like my title."OH, BY THE WAY..."!
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. The suspected gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States. The personnel in our Seabee Battalion on the island of Okinawa awoke to the news...NMCB#9 was the Pacific Alert Battalion and saying that the time and news was rec'd in an orderly fashion would have been like a joke... thru the long day of inept indecisions and correct, but still faulty decisions, funeral dirges played over Armed Forces Radio. The chapel was opened and many of the troops went there for solace and comfort. Over the long years since John Kennedy was murdered, and faults were divulged about his personal behavior, the sympathy has rather faded. A dozen years later when I had become a business owner and would go to civilians homes to work, I would see grottos and like religious alters set up to honor the man...those were predominantly displayed in the Mexican family homes in Oxnard and Ventura... Fellow instructor, Glenn Sherwood and I had met Senator JFK traveling with a fellow associate in Rhode Island when he was running for the Presidential nomination. I told a story years ago about the event Sherwood and I had experienced..Chief
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. The suspected gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States. The personnel in our Seabee Battalion on the island of Okinawa awoke to the news...NMCB#9 was the Pacific Alert Battalion and saying that the time and news was rec'd in an orderly fashion would have been like a joke... thru the long day of inept indecisions and correct, but still faulty decisions, funeral dirges played over Armed Forces Radio. The chapel was opened and many of the troops went there for solace and comfort. Over the long years since John Kennedy was murdered, and faults were divulged about his personal behavior, the sympathy has rather faded. A dozen years later when I had become a business owner and would go to civilians homes to work, I would see grottos and like religious alters set up to honor the man...those were predominantly displayed in the Mexican family homes in Oxnard and Ventura... Fellow instructor, Glenn Sherwood and I had met Senator JFK traveling with a fellow associate in Rhode Island when he was running for the Presidential nomination. I told a story years ago about the event Sherwood and I had experienced..Chief