I had almost forgotten what day it is. I was on the way to a class on 22 November 1963, and I learned of the President’s death from a colleague, Elizabeth Lomax, a close relative of the famous Alan, God rest her soul.

22 November was a Friday. I was teaching an extension course at old Crozier Technical High School in downtown Dallas the following Monday evening. As we were getting ready to begin the lesson, an impassioned voice came over the loudspeaker asking us all to join in prayer. I don’t remember the prayer, only its agonized conclusion: “Why, Lord, why did it have to happen, and why did it have to happen here?!”

In the time intervening we had witnessed, via the relatively new medium of television, report of the the death of Officer J. D. Tippett, a good deal of bluster from Dallas District Attorney, Henry Wade, and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. We had also witnessed the President’s funeral, with the Kennedy family walking behind the horse-drawn caisson that bore the President’s coffin through the streets of Washington from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

It was a time like no other–until I walked into my office building at North Texas years later and saw on television the death of the World Trade Center.

Thanks to Susan Russell for these images.