BRIAN LORD'S RADIO STORIES
A K/MEN Flashback: Nov. 22, 1963
I had teased at the end of the last posting that I was going to explain all the crap I went through with booze starting in the late 60's but I realized I had missed a very relevant story which occurred while I was at K/Men in San Bernardino: The Assassination of John F Kennedy. This was an event that outdid the coverage of all previous media stories because media had grown. Things were never quite the same after November twenty-second, and it was television that changed the most. Of course I was in radio but it was a very emotional day for those of us who worked on that story. Reporting what had happened in Dallas to the audience. But I'm not going to pontificate, I'm just going to tell what it was like for me. I should first mention that most of the K/Men DJ's in those early years pulled double duty. We did a three hour stint in the newsroom and a three hour radio program. My newsrun usually started at 3PM.
At around 11AM PST that day I was sitting in the back room reading Billboard magazine when I heard the teletype machine across the lobby and through the Newsroom door, ring. Six times. Five bells indicated a bulletin and drew a lot of attention but SIX was a Flash and that topped a bulletin. One of the K/Men, William F. Williams was manning the news desk. He signaled Jim Mitchell, the DJ on the air, that he had a Flash and to kill the record he was playing: "Big John" by Jimmy Dean (honest) and then went on the air and said that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas Texas. William F. was from Tennessee and had never lost his southern accent although he had a well modulated voice. He would be the first to admit that he did not possess a good news delivery. The Program Director, Bill Watson, shouted 'Where's Lord" and I yelled back and he yelled "Get in the Newsroom, NOW".
It wasn't a slight at Willie, it was just that I had more experience doing news in my short career than Williams and Watson didn't think Willie's accent was going to stand up to this story. When I went to the teletype I saw the first flash from United Press International. It was garbled because the person at UPI was stunned. The second time it came over the wire it was correct and properly worded and stated that President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas , Texas had been fired upon and the president had been hit.. Subsequent bulletins came across the wire saying his car was en route from the Dealey Plaza to the Parkland Memorial hospital with a full police escort at top speed. The president's condition was not mentioned. Jim, the DJ had found an instrumental LP from the Production Library and was playing it on air while I read the bulletins as they came in.
It seemed like very little time had gone by when the wire sent the announcement that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States was dead. He had been shot by an assassins bullet.
There was a pause; the teletype went silent for perhaps a minute or so and I looked at these colleagues of mine and it was apparent that nobody had any idea of what to say or do. The fact that I was a Canadian never entered my head. This was bigger than anything I had ever known. I was basically struck dumb following the announcement I had just read on the radio. I saw the female staff crying and the telephones were ringing off the hook as people called us to confirm what they were hearing. But there was that pause. That one-half minute of my life I shall never forget -- by which I mean every last detail. The machine gone silent, the attitude of the staff and the sounds around me and in that time I acquired full realization that this was so completely unexpected and awful -- and my thought was simply "why?"
The wire fired up and as the machine spat out more information I signaled Jim that I would alert him if I had something. And I did. The names of Dealey Plaza, Texas School Book Depository, Parkland Hospital, a few names of doctors, the fact that Texas Governor John Connolly had been shot but not killed, the condition of Mrs. Kennedy and the swarming secret service agents seemingly everywhere. It was pure and real drama but the mind kicks into gear and I just read in a very flat delivery, everything I could piece together as it came across UPI's machine, one of those old fashioned things that were in use in all news centers in the early 60's. Bulky and noisy.
I completely lost track of time, not that it mattered. New pieces of information were coming in from the Plaza and it wasn't long before a report surfaced. A man had been seen firing a rifle out of an upper floor window in the School Book Depository building. Within a few minutes this report stabilized and the Dallas Police had broadcast a bulletin to apprehend the individual. It was becoming apparent that The United States had been terribly shaken and that much had to be done. From a garbled message an hour or so ago, news began to flood in. Much of it may have been accurate, much of it hysterical but it was not long before it was known that a suspect was lose and the Dallas police, at full strength, were on the case. The huge, gruesome tale had just begun to form a cohesive news story and slowly a rather shaky focus took form.
We did have one full-time experienced newsman and he came in about 1 PM and relieved me. The PD mentioned that we would have to come up with some kind of appropriate music because rock 'n' roll didn't cut it. We drove up to the big supermarket a mile away and bought some soft, mellow LP's to serve as a collection of the "appropriate" music to accompany a presidential assassination. There is no such thing in a music store as an 'assassination section' so I picked out stuff that Mantovani might have chosen and we recycled that for three days with news bulletins aired at the newsman's discretion, that and the Elevator music. It was eerie in that big supermarket which also sold appliances, etc. much like today's Wall Mart stores. There was a bank of television sets. Nobody was shopping, they were all standing, most appearing horror-stricken, in front of the TV's. There was practically no traffic at all on the streets.
The full-time newsman (AM and PM drive-split shift) asked me if I could assist him that afternoon so we worked in the newsroom together until 11 PM pacing one another and eventually got into an ad lib situation without trying to offer any suggestions, just recaps and oddities and the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had been captured but not before he had shot and killed a young Dallas policeman by the name of J.D. Tippit. A lot of time was spent by the media trying to find out what the J & D stood for. They stood for nothing. Oswald was apprehended, placed under heavy guard and the story of the assassination began to bulge in every direction as material kept coming in from witnesses and police as well as the FBI and the White House. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One, everybody has seen the picture.
I came in at noon the next day, Saturday, and began to get a bit creative. I called the Dallas Police Station and asked to speak to someone who could tell me about Oswald. To my amazement I was transferred to a sergeant who was only too pleased to talk. I set up a deal with him. I'd call every hour and check on what was new. Then I asked him to describe Oswald: his attitude, his demeanor, his clothing, everything about the man that this sergeant could think of. I hadn't heard until that moment that Oswald had been treated very roughly. Regardless of the Kennedy shooting, this man had killed one of their own. An hour or two later there was news that a gun had been found but it was not the gun which had reportedly killed Kennedy, it was a hand gun. It was actually insignificant information but sounded important. (This contact was of the opinion he was speaking to the entirety of the city of Los Angeles and was up for the job.)
Later on I ran across a name somewhere, Joe Molina, who apparently knew Oswald. The Dallas Directory Information gave me a number, I called it and got lucky. Joe was eating his dinner, his kid answered and I heard him say "Dad it's some news guy agin". Joe indeed had worked with Oswald and answered all the questions one would be expected to be asked of someone who had known the man who had allegedly assassinated the president of the United States. I guess I spent a fair amount of the stations money on Long Distance phone calls, and worked a lot of overtime which I didn't put in for -- but I never lost sight of the fact that what I was doing was working on something that would go down in history. I guess there were a lot of others, thousands, who were doing the same thing and it was not pleasant but it had a warped sense of "disaster stimulation" attached to it.
Sunday, the LA Rams played football at the Coliseum after Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner allowed Sunday's games to proceed in some areas but with no frills, no cheerleaders, just a solemn colour salute. A few of us went to the game. Jack Ruby had shot Oswald that morning before a huge TV audience. Monday the president was buried in Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. before a huge TV audience. Beginning at midnight, we returned to our regular programming. The immediate story was over but the full force of this event will probably never be completely satisfied. There was the Warren Commission and CBS anchor Walter Cronkite. Both the commission and the network did exhaustive investigations and came up with Oswald as the culprit. Not everybody believed them.
Back up to date next time.