Phil Roberts, 11-22-2023
Electronics class that late Friday morning in Worland High School, the last 50-minute class before noon, was routine enough. Each of the dozen students did work on his/her assigned project while the teacher, Ray Harrison, fiddled with the new high-powered radio he had just built from a kit. All the while, we listened to his “hometown” station–KRLD in Dallas. The news bulletin said President Kennedy’s motorcade was about to enter Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Lunch time. As we packed up our projects for the week, the teacher shut off the radio. “The national press was wrong,” Harrison, later a Wyoming state legislator, told us, “Dallas loves the President!” We left the attic-like “electronics-radio room” in the top of the old high school and, we went off, one by one, to lunch.
We lived on South 15th Street, only five blocks from school. Brother Steve and I got home about the same time; my dad and brother David, a few minutes later. We were done with the meal and mom had just distributed dessert, her delicious lemon pudding, when the phone rang. Mom answered. We could hear that the speaker, our neighbor, Babs Runnells, was almost hysterical. “Turn on the TV!” we heard her shout. There, on our black-and-white Zenith, was Walter Cronkite, removing his glasses as he intoned, “the report from Parkland is that the President is dead.” That was 60 years ago today–November 22, 1963. Remembering like it was yesterday..