COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 48

WHERE WAS I WHEN PRESIDENT KENNEDY WAS SHOT
I remember my answer to the question, “Where were you when you heard President Kennedy was shot?” Apparently good reviews of my adventures of teaching the computer class in Huntsville, reached the RCA office in Van Nuys. For the next month or so I conducted several classes on that computer, to many engineers at RCA. Depending on what their connection to the project was, the discussion ranged from a half day, to a week.

One day, when we left the classroom for a coffee-break, we heard and saw the reactions of others in the office who had already heard the news about the President, and the TV was showing in detail, the street patterns the President’s cavalcade followed. When the class reconvened, there were already discussions about why the Kennedy cavalcade had made a zigzag from the street they were on originally, to the street that went right in front of the School Book Depository. Who conspired with whom to make that happen?

Since I had lived in Dallas, and knew the street pattern, I drew a diagram of the downtown streets on a blackboard, to illustrate that they could not make the right-hand turn needed to drive to the convention center (where President Kennedy was to give a speech), from the original street, but needed to move one street to the right, where the Book Depository was located. It was now necessary to get the President to the Parkland Hospital, located in the same general area as the original destination, the convention center.

It would be obvious to anyone who had spent time in Dallas, that to get to the convention center from downtown Dallas, (which was well known as the President’s destination) it was necessary to make the turns that were made. That change of street, at least, was not part of any conspiracy, it was a necessity. Anyone interested in the location of the car at any particular time, would have known that.

But isn’t interesting, the first time I heard a hint of a conspiracy in the death of our President, was before he had died.