By Jim Heffernan
Someone said on National Public Radio this week that very
few journalists who were working when President John F. Kennedy was
assassinated are still active today, the 50th anniversary of the
tragedy.
I’m not as active as I used to be, but I’m still doing some
writing, including for this blog. When Kennedy was murdered, I had been a
working journalist for just over a month, which I recounted in a column for the
Duluth News Tribune back on the 30th anniversary of the
assassination. That column, which was included in my book Cooler Near the Lake,
is reprinted here (see below).
I can add a couple of experiences I had on that momentous
day that are not included in that column. When I arrived for my afternoon shift
at the Duluth Herald & News Tribune, a “cub” reporter if there ever was
one, the newsroom was chaotic. Assigning editors were frantic to “localize” the
story, since Kennedy had visited Duluth just two months before.
I was given two assignments: Check WDSM-TV and Radio,
sponsors of the annual Christmas City of the North Parade, to determine if that
night’s parade would be canceled, and then call mayors of Northeastern
Minnesota cities and towns for a reaction to the news of the president’s death.
Taking first things first, I contacted WDSM, which, at the
time was owned by the same company that owned the newspapers. The parade would
go on as scheduled, I was told. I was flabbergasted.
But WDSM and its TV Channel 6 came to its senses within a
short time, calling back to announce that the parade would be canceled after
all. Thus they missed their chance at the national spotlight: “As nation
mourns, Duluth holds festive holiday parade,” the headline might have been.
So much for that. My second assignment, calling as many area
mayors as I could reach, wasn’t much more successful. The reason? They all said
pretty much the same thing, summarized here:
Question: Mr. Mayor, what is your reaction to the
assassination of President Kennedy?
Universal answer: This is a terrible tragedy. I’m shocked.
Years later I looked up the News Tribune of Nov. 23, 1963,
to see what I had written. Buried deep inside the paper is a short article
about the reaction of area mayors, naming several expressing their shock at the
terrible tragedy.
Now here’s what I wrote 30 years later about another aspect
of my role as a working journalist on that fateful day.
JFK: Four Presidential Assassinations in Three Generations
By Jim Heffernan
Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday, November 21, 1993
and reprinted in the book, Cooler Near the Lake, by Jim Heffernan in November, 2008
and reprinted in the book, Cooler Near the Lake, by Jim Heffernan in November, 2008
My paternal grandfather, whose life overlapped mine by just
two years, was 10 years old when Lincoln was assassinated. In my grandfather’s
lifetime, two other presidents also were murdered–James Garfield in 1881 and William
McKinley in 1901. My father was born 29 years after the Lincoln assassination–a
year short of the time that has now elapsed since President John F. Kennedy was
shot and killed 30 years ago tomorrow.
In my father’s lifetime, two presidents were assassinated:
McKinley near the beginning of his life, and Kennedy near the end. He was too
young to remember much about McKinley, and I broke the news to him about
Kennedy.
Why all this ancient history now? Aside from this being the
anniversary of the JFK assassination, it shows that such acts are not quite as
rare as we tend to think. Four murdered American presidents in three
generations of one family is taking them out at quite a rate.
The day Kennedy was shot, I had been a working journalist
for 35 days, counting weekends. Call it a month’s experience. Labeling me a
journalist at that stage of my career is extravagant. But my title was
reporter, and proud of it.
Everyone over five or six years of age on Nov. 22, 1963,
remembers what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
A few of us get to share those memories publicly. I share mine to recall my
failure to do what I should have done as a newspaper reporter on what was
arguably the biggest breaking news story of the century.
I was asleep when the assassination occurred. Working nights
on the morning Duluth News Tribune, I had already slipped into the out late,
sleep late lifestyle of my fellow nightside journalists. So I was still in bed,
sound asleep, about 35 minutes past noon that Friday when the ringing of the
telephone jolted me awake. It was my aunt, Elsa, who had been watching “As the
World Turns” when the soap opera was interrupted with a bulletin that shots had
been fired at the president. I clicked on our TV, and CBS had returned to “As
the World Turns,” but not for long. Within a moment of my tuning in, Walker
Cronkite was there in his shirtsleeves confirming that shots had been fired
from a grassy knoll and the president’s limousine had sped away.
Here are some of my thoughts: “Wow! Big story. Wonder if
they know about it down at the paper. You’re a reporter, check and see. Don’t
be silly–of course the newspaper knows. They’d think I was stupid to call and
be mad I interrupted them.”
My father was at work as a photo engraver at the newspaper,
so I decided to call him. By then it must have been about 12:50 p.m. When my
father answered, I said something like, ‘Boy, big story about Kennedy getting
shot, huh?” I phrased it so that, if he already knew, it wouldn’t seem like I
thought I was breaking the news. But I breaking the news. Busy
working on the evening Duluth Herald, he said he’d heard nothing about it in
the third-floor engraving department.
That made me wonder if I really should call the second-floor
newsroom. If they didn’t know about it in other parts of the building, maybe
the news editors didn’t know either. But I didn’t call.
I should have called the first time. The Herald used to go
to press about noon. A normal Friday edition was humming off the press when the
assassination occurred. The Associated Press was on top of the story, but they
couldn’t get printed information out on the wire as quickly as TV networks
could interrupt with bulletins.
By the time the Herald editors finally received a written
bulletin on the wire and literally stopped the presses (the only time in 30
years I’ve seen that happen), it was about 1 p.m. or shortly after. An hour
later, when I arrived for my work shift, I was told that if I had called at,
say, 12:40, it would have saved thousands of papers and precious minutes
preparing a new Herald for that day. “I wish you had called,” lamented the news
editor. The papers already run off were scrapped and the edition started over
with the assassination dominating the front page.
That’s my story of the day Kennedy was shot. I’d been in the newspaper business a month
and in my own way I had already blown the assassination of a president. Some
reporter. Some future.
