» posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 at 1:42 pm by John
November 22 42 years ago
In April, 1945, when I was 11 years old, I recall being shocked by the news of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I was delivering newspapers for a neighborhood newspaper about six blocks from my home. It was warm enough that people were outside their homes as I walked from house to apartment house to house. Several people along my route told me of the news, apparently figuring an 11-year-old could understand.
Just about everybody you talk with, if they were old enough in 1963, can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard news of the assassination of President John Kennedy.
I had the unique experience of reporting it on the radio.
I was a reporter-newscaster for WRCV in Philadelphia, an NBC-owned station (it is now KYW NewsRadio). In those days, I did the morning news starting at 5:30 a.m. so I was near the end of my work day in the newsroom, along with John Schubeck, who at the time did the morning cut-ins during the TODAY SHOW. The Copy Boy in the small room where the teletype machines were located heard highly unusual loud bell sounds coming from one of the machines.
The Copy Boy gave me the copy, something to the effect that “shots rang out at the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas”. Soon thereafter, the follow-up said President Kennedy had been shot. I told John Schubeck of the brief item, and he said at once: “You take it on radio, I’ll take it to the announce booth (television).”
John had been employed there before I joined the station just three months prior to November 22. So I was not about to question his judgment. He “beat” the NBC network to the news on Channel 3, where Chet Huntley and David Brinkley soon took over non-stop coverage.
I had seen first-hand how popular President Kennedy was. For the TV news side (Channel 3), I was assigned to politics, and took one of the station’s crews to Convention Hall one night in October when the main speaker at the Democratic City Committee Annual Dinner was John Kennedy. I never will forget the thunderous ovation he received when he walked into the hall and over to the head table. He was a very, very handsome man. And his smile was unbelievable. The place just came apart, there was such adoration.
About a month after that, I walked into the radio studio where a disc jockey was playing music. I told him President Kennedy had been shot, and I needed the air at once. The disk jockey introduced me with a brief mention that I had a major news bulletin. By the time I was on the air, the teletype machine account had given additional details, which I read on the air. The disc jockey had the unfortunate predicament of following the bulletin with a comment, and he said, I thought quite nervously, that WRCV would provide further details as soon as we had them. I know both of us were in a kind of shock.
I left the studio and went back to the newsroom, and walked into the teletype room and watched in further shock, by myself, as a teletype writer, somewhere, manually and very slowly and carefully typed that the President had been shot, “PERHAPS FATALLY”, or words to that effect.
NBC-TV had not yet taken the air on our television station, Channel 3. NBC Radio also had not been heard from. I took the additional information including “PERHAPS FATALLY” back into the studio, and asked for the air again. The disc jockey interrupted the music, and introduced me again. This was only two or three minutes after the first bulletin.
I read all the additional information including the PERHAPS FATALLY, explaining that we were updating immediately so as to provide all we knew.
When I finished, the disc jockey said something like “Well, we certainly hope that’s not true.”
What else could he say??
filed under News Coverage · Personal · Personal Radio-TV | 95 comments
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