On November 22nd, 1963, 12:30pm Central Standard Time, CBS viewers across America would have been watching the latest episode of “As The World Turns” when suddenly a black screen with “CBS News Bulletin” flashed across the screen, followed soon after by the first news report from Walter Cronkite on a breaking situation in Dallas, Texas involving President John F Kennedy:
“Here is a bulliten from CBS News…in Dallas Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas…the first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.”
After a few more break-ins to regular coverage, CBS switched to wall-to-wall coverage in their newsroom with Cronkite front and center on the screen for much of the initial moments. After about 40 minutes on the air, Cronkite broke the news to the nation:
“From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official…President Kennedy died at 1pm Central Standard Time.
For many, the next few days were a whirlwind. Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, JFK’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was himself killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, and the former President was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.
The assassination was the first of four major killings to rock the nation throughout the 1960s. And 60 years later, we still don’t know much about why Lee Harvey Oswald did what he did to end the President’s life. Former WTMJ host and self-described “JFK nerd” Gene Mueller tells Wisconsin’s Morning News Oswald “was a bad actor, a bad husband, a liar, a guy who had a taste for blood to try to kill somebody before he used the same gun he used on Kennedy.”
When it comes to that failed marriage, Mueller says Oswald had recently attempted to reconcile with his ex-wife shortly before the string of choices that led him to the Texas School Book Depository.
“There’s a school of thought that says if she had said ‘Yeah, okay, let’s get back together’ none of this would have happened” said Mueller.
Mueller also recounted his experience watching the infamous Zapruder film with one of his professors at UW-Stevens Point before it became public knowledge later in the decade. “When you see it the first time it’s like ‘Well yeah, there’s no way this played out the way they told it to us’. And then you do the heavy lifting and do a lot of boring, wonky reading, and you go ‘Yeah, this only could’ve happened one way’.”
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