The day the world changed

I remember it as it happened last week.
We were in Havana, and everybody in Cuba was in shock. The day the world changed.

By: Maria Teresa Villaverde Trujilloashiningworld@cox.net 




Since it was no longer raining, the top had been left off. The car turned 

off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 pm …when gunfire suddenly reverberated. Bullets struck the President’s neck and head. 

                                    At 1:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. 

-November 22-

-November 22, 1963, 2:38 pm- 

Lyndon B. Johnson takes the presidential oath of office, as Air Force One 

carries his wife Lady Bird, Jacqueline Kennedy and White House aides 

back to Washington from Dallas. Earlier, President Kennedy had been assassinated, and the speed with which this ceremony was arranged was purposeful. Johnson and his advisers wanted to assure a shocked nation 

that the government was stable, and the situation under control. 

                                                 President Kennedy's body lies in repose for 24 hours.

White House, East Room.

    A Mass was said at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.

-November 23-

On Saturday, November 23, 1963, the people of the United States were in shocked mourning, trying to come to terms with the assassination of John F Kennedy the day before. His body had been shipped back to Washington and funerary technicians had worked in vain to cosmetically reconstruct the top of his head. As his widow's request, the body lay in state in the East Room of the White House, which was laid out and draped in a recreation of the way it looked when Abraham Lincoln's body lay there in 1865. The casket, closed at Jackie's behest, lay on the Lincoln catafalque, the pine bier on which numerous presidents and other governmental dignitaries have been laid over the years. There was a private service in the East Room; the public one would not be until Monday, after a day of lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday.   (Source: outmavarin.blogspot)

-November 24-

 President John Kennedy's body lies in state at the US Capitol Rotunda. Kennedy lay where, nearly 100 years earlier, Lincoln had lain.

An honor guard stood vigil over his remains. The catafalque upon which the remains rested was the same one used in the funerals

of the Unknown Soldiers from the World War II and the Korean War.

Photograph by Abbie Rowe, National Park Service.

                                          ( John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.) 

A limbers and caissons bearing the casket of President John F. Kennedy seen moving down the White House drive on the way to St. Matthew's Cathedral on November 25, 1963. A color guard holding the presidential colors, the flag of the President of the United States and the riderless horse "Black Jack" follow behind as a symbol of a fallen leader.

Years later the President Johnson said: "…I remember marching behind

the caisson to the Cathedral. The muffled rumble of drums set up

a heartbreaking echo…"

                                                   

November 22-25, 1963
A son's farewell salute. John F. Kennedy Jr. -3 year old-.

November 24, 2012

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