November 22, 1963 was a Friday. The following Thursday would be Thanksgiving. I was 12½ years old. Our home was in Washington. I was with Mom in our family doctor’s office. The radio music stopped and a voice came on announcing that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas, and taken to Parkland Hospital.

John F Kennedy and wife Jacqueline in 1961 … JFK was taken from us before we could fully see his vision. Credit: Elio Romano/London Express

We went home and turned on the TV, a black-and-white set in the living room. It kept repeating what was known: John F. Kennedy shot while riding in the limousine, with its top down. Governor John Connally shot and wounded. Then Walter Cronkite of CBS, reading bulletins coming in on the wires from reporters in Dallas, made the announcement. “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1pm Central Standard Time … some 38 minutes ago.”

Cronkite, distraught, took off his glasses and composed himself to continue reporting to the county.

And the world stopped.

Now America was marked by the moment before Kennedy was killed, and then all the moments after the greatest tragedy in the history of US presidents since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln nearly 100 years earlier.

President John F. Kennedy, with wife Jacqueline, waves from his motorcade in Dallas soon before his assassination on November 22, 1963. Credit: Jim Altgens/AP Photo

The city shut down. All we could do was watch the television. For the next four days, all programming on the three television networks was pre-empted. Kennedy’s casket was taken to Air Force One for the flight back to Washington. A federal judge swore in vice president Lyndon Johnson as president on the plane, with Jacqueline Kennedy next to him, wearing the pink suit stained with her husband’s blood.

And then Sunday. Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected killer, had been found and arrested. It was early afternoon. Oswald, handcuffed, was being moved from one jail to another. TV cameras were in the hallway. A man stepped in front of Oswald, fired a gun, and Oswald grunted and collapsed.

The murder on live television in the midst of our national nightmare rocked the country to its core. What the hell was happening to us?