For many of my generation, "the day Kennedy was shot" was like our Pearl Harbor day--a huge jolting turning point that we never forgot. For the younger folks, compare it to 9/11. So seeing it was 58 years ago, I had to go back and see how that day went for me.
Nov 22, 1963 Fri
I woke about the usual hour and got up to go feed. Last night I dreamed of Dr Joe Hudson—why, I don’t know. We all went out to do the pasture chores and Dad cut two cottonwood trees. I rode Tina down to them. She feels so big. We got the mail and then Mom and Dad helped lead up the animals. It was then we heard the news. President Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin in Dallas, TX about 12:30. It is, of course, a terrible and unbelievable thing. Poor Jackie was sitting at his side when the shot was fired. We of course had to listen to the news reports most of the afternoon. I did ride Prez for a little and led Chief. Then we drove out and did the evening pasture chores. While we were eating, Evelyn came down. We visited for awhile, talked of many things. She worked on my hair etc. This has been a long and terrible day that will be long remembered in history.
By this time I was a full time cowboy girl and the livestock work was my main occupation. I know I have mentioned all these animals before. My mare Tina was now about 2/3 through her first pregnancy so I was not working her much but did ride her bareback some. The mules would eat the green shoots and bark off a cottonwood tree and that gave them something to gnaw on and not chew corral rails, wooden feed troughs etc. Dr Joe was the head doctor at the Whipple VA Hospital where Dad had been a patient off and on. He was a family friend of sorts and a cool guy. Evelyn was of course my friend Evelyn Graves Morales.She was still in high school.
We'd been out to the pasture that morning and were back at home about ready to go in for lunch and turned on the radio. It was certainly appalling news and we were caught up in it for the rest of that day and a few more. We did not have TV but saw things in magazines and certainly heard much on the radio. Ancient history now but still many clear memories. And it is still really a cold case crime. Did Oswald really do it? And why did Ruby then kill him? That the whole world witnessed, so no doubt there, but mysteries have always piled deep.
An odd bit of background: My late husband was a military police detective in the Marine Corps and stationed at Atsugi, Japan in the later mid-fifties. Strangely, Oswald was a Marine at that time and was also there. He got into trouble, I think with blackmarket stuff like sale of cigarettes etc from the commissary to the Japanese. Jim and his partner worked the case and busted him. Jim said Oswald was qualified with a rifle since all Marines had to be then but was far from a marksman of sniper caliber. He was also not the sharpest tool in the shed and took the fall for what others had conned him into doing. So Jim never believed Oswald had actually done the shooting. I honestly cannot even guess but suspect we will never know the real, whole story.
A marginally relevant photo or two--Jim Walton--one as he would have looked there in 1957 as an E-4 or E-5 MP Sergeant (can't quite make out the stripe) and one when he was home from Boot Camp in late 1948. Ernest Gabrielson who also went to Bisbee High and graduated in 1948 ,was also in the Marines but they were never stationed together. Ernie got out after one enlistment or right after the Korean conflict and went to college and became an English teacher. Old history to us MUHS alums!
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