50 years later, area residents reflect on JFK killing

Few news events have been seared into the memories of Americans as powerfully as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. With Friday marking the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, the Leader asked various members of the community what they remembered from that day. What they shared largely echoed the Flathead Courier’s description of “disbelief, followed by shock, anguish and sorrow” from the Nov. 28, 1963 issue.

Mauri Morin, Ronan

Morin, then an employee of Martin Marietta in Orlando, Fla., “vividly remembers” working on a sales pitch to the Air Force for a semiconductor component when a colleague asked if he’d heard the news.

“I’ll never forget it,” Morin said. “My initial reaction was that it was someone’s ugly joke.”

Morin remembers intently monitoring the news over the next several days, and was watching live on TV when Dallas businessman Jack Ruby gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald.

“It’s just a very bizarre happening,” Morin said, describing the whole situation. “First to have Kennedy shot, then to catch the guy that did it, and then to have someone come in and pop him while he was on his way to jail. The whole thing was bizarre from start to finish.”

Vicki Dennison, St. Ignatius

In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dennison said living in Miami colors her recollections of the event that shook the nation.

Dennison was 11 and her mother had just picked her up from school. They were heading to pick up her brother from his school when the news came on the radio.

Dennison said there was a communal sense of horror that someone would do such a thing. Her family followed the story on television.

“The man was very charismatic and even those who didn’t agree with his politics respected him,” she said. “There was a deep sadness about what might have been had he not been killed.”

Penny Jarecki, Polson

Jarecki recalls hearing the news from a classroom in Woodland Hills, Calif., where, coincidentally, she was teaching history to junior high school students. The news was broken over the school’s loud speaker, and she says that a “shocked disbelief” ensued.

“It was just stunning. We all were just speechless.”

Jarecki remembers being “glued to the TV” in the days that followed, as the nation watched the drama unfold surrounding Kennedy’s burial and Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest.