Friday morning on the 22nd was like any other morning, quiet, overcast and damp. The wall clock in the main office read 11:12 a.m. and Chief Vaughan in charge of personnel where I was assigned at the U.S. Navel Air Station, Long Beach, California was on the telephone making lunch plans. It was a deja vu experience because I was born at the naval hospital here at the same base.
The office staff was occupied with the normal routines of the day. My friend Tim, a high school buddy, and I joined the Navy together. He was working in the postmaster office sorting out the morning mail and I was at my desk, re-typing an instructional memo from the Chief to his office personnel. Just another fine day in the world of being in the Navy.
I looked up as the door to the main building flew open. Paula Johnson, a yeoman with short red hair and blue eyes, ran into the office screaming and crying hysterically. “The President’s been shot! The President’s been shot! Oh my God! Oh my God! President Kennedy has been shot!”
Ten Navy Waves (females) worked in the personnel office; most of them were married with attitudes. This was not a bad attitude.
The Chief ran out of his office hollering loudly, “What in the Hell is going on?”
“Turn the radio on, turn the radio on,” Paula kept screaming.
The Chief ran down the hall to the lunch room and the Packard Bell radio. He fumbled around with the station dial, until he found what he was looking for.
“This is Walter Cronkite, reporting from Washington, D.C.,” came blaring out of the black box. “Dallas, Texas, 2:12 PM this afternoon, a motorcade carrying the President of the United States, John F Kenney was fired upon with a series of bullets from an unknown source. the President has been shot! The President has been taken by ambulance to Memorial Hospital in downtown Dallas.”
The sounds of the radio seemed to fade out.
A stillness covered the room like a wet cold blanket. The office personnel stood at their desks without making a sound, no one moved, no one spoke. The Chief, who was never at a loss for words, squinted a bit, looked around the room, and walked out deep in his own thoughts. The noon meal had all the fixings one could want but no one ate, no one spoke, no one did anything except stare down at their plates, lost in disbelief. I have felt such solitude and emptiness. People were lost, looking for answers to why their role model was shot by an assassin’s bullet.
The latest reports from Washington were, “President Kennedy had died on the operating table as doctors tried vigorously to save his life.” A dormant insanity infected the Naval Air Station like the flu virus. The scuttlebutt was, Khrushchev and Cuba were behind the assassination and the rumors were spreading about the possibility of a world war.
The transfer orders we’d just received to our last duty stated, we were to report for duty at the Naval Air Station, Atsugi Japan, a neighbor to Russia.
“Shit! What’s going to happen next?” I wondered. I think Tim was a little scared. I know I was.