By John Fogarty
It was an ordinary day that would later become a day of days. A day that would live forever in my memory and in the memory of millions. One that began for me as just another schoolday in November. Just another Friday that carried no inkling early on of what evening would bring: news of the killing of a president.
I’d raced home from school at lunchtime. Thoughts full of what I was missing back in the schoolyard, bolting my lunch, running back to join in the games before the bell sounded for the end of play.
Unaware as I ran that a new day was breaking over the city of Dallas: that the president’s killer was waking to what seemed another ordinary day, leaving his house for work at the Texas School Book Depository: but secretly going over what he was planning to do some five hours later.
It would take but a minute and shock the world.
The day dragged along as ordinary days do. At five-thirty, I was sitting in the kitchen eating supper, bickering with my brothers over who was getting most to eat, while the great man, who would soon be no more, was at Love Field airport.
He sat into a limousine before setting off in a motorcade for downtown Dallas, tens of thousands thronging the streets, waiting in the Texas sunshine to smile, to wave, to cheer their president as he passed.
Lee Harvey Oswald was already in position at a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository high above the happy throng in Dealey Plaza. Overlooking the motorcade route. Gun ready, sights set. Waiting.