Friday, March 29, 2024

'Campus came to a grinding halt'

Alumni reflect on 50th anniversary of JFK assassination

November 21, 2013
	<p>After the death of the president, campus churches were overflown with mourning students. Many of the young people felt a personal connection to Kennedy because of his age, charisma and promises for the future. 1963 <span class="caps">MSU</span> Yearbook/courtesy of the <span class="caps">MSU</span> Archives</p>

After the death of the president, campus churches were overflown with mourning students. Many of the young people felt a personal connection to Kennedy because of his age, charisma and promises for the future. 1963 MSU Yearbook/courtesy of the MSU Archives

Nov. 22, 1963 started off as an ordinary day on MSU’s campus. Light rain pattered over the grounds as a November chill settled in, and students were finishing up their last classes for the week and preparing for a highly-anticipated football game against Illinois.

No one was prepared for the news that came later. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who had stopped to speak at MSU on his campaign trail before he was elected, was assassinated in Dallas on that Friday afternoon.

According to documents and many alumni who were attending MSU that year, the entire campus went into shock at the news. Churches were overwhelmed with an influx of saddened students. The football game was postponed.

Classes and weekend plans were put on hold as students and faculty crowded around television sets, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

“Everything on campus came to a grinding halt,” said Roni O’Connor, a 1964 alumna who was a senior when Kennedy died. “There was a collective feeling of loss and sadness. … From that moment on, everything changed.”

Kennedy at the Union

Three years before his death, Kennedy came to MSU and spoke outside the Union as part of his presidential campaign.

Alumna Barbara Nitecki-Soules was part of a group of women that dubbed themselves “The Kennedy Girls,” and welcomed the president to MSU.

“He had this aura about him, he was ‘the handsome young senator,” Nitecki-Soules said in a phone interview from her home in Kentucky. “We were specifically told not to (speak to him), but of course the girls mobbed him. The Secret Service must have had a fit.”

O’Connor, a member of the National Alumni Board of the MSU Alumni Association and treasurer of the MSU Alumni Club of Greater New York, attended the event as a freshman and recalled the hopeful feelings of those in the audience.

“We were in the front row — we could have reached out and touched him,” O’Connor said. “We were excited to be able to see a possible future president on campus.”

Death of a president

On the day Kennedy was shot, Doug Roberts, now the director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, had an additional worry on his mind.

Then 16 years old, Roberts was in his sixth-period high school chemistry class when a jolting message was broadcast over the school’s intercom. Kennedy had been killed, Texas Gov. John Connally had been wounded and a U.S. Secret Service agent had been killed.

Roberts’ mind immediately jumped to his father, who was the leader on presidential detail that day with the Secret Service and was riding in the car behind the presidential limousine. Roberts raced down the hall to the nearest pay phone and dialed his mother. His father was alive.

“At the time, the president’s assassination had been superseded by my personal connections,” Roberts said. “There was never a doubt in my mind my father would have taken a bullet for the president.”

Roberts said he’d found a new appreciation for his father, the toughest man he has ever known.

“50 years later, it has brought back memories,” Roberts said. “In all the shows on TV about Kennedy, I see pictures of the president with my dad. For a brief moment, it has brought my father back into my life.”

“The Rose Bowl spirit died with President John Kennedy”

At the 2:30 p.m. Board of Trustees meeting that took place on the day of Kennedy’s assassination, then-MSU President John Hannah put his head in his hands. He had met with Kennedy just nine days earlier to discuss civil rights initiatives.

Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.

“President Kennedy was a friendly, alert and warm individual with deep feelings for civil rights and other social problems facing the United States at this time.” Hannah said, according to the meeting minutes.

Bruce Fabricant, the editor-in-chief of The State News at the time, covered the meeting and said he remembers nearly every aspect of that day. He’d learned of Kennedy’s death in the newsroom when AP teletype machines began whirring with updates.

“I just remember walking from the Student Services building to the meeting on that cold, misty, rainy day so vividly,” he said. “You just don’t forget those things.”

Despite Hannah’s affection for the president, he initially refused to reschedule the Saturday football game against Illinois. But after a request from Gov. George Romney, father of 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Hannah backed down.

Hannah announced three hours before the scheduled kickoff that MSU would reschedule the football game.

On Thanksgiving Day, a crowd of 74,342 gathered at the game that would determine whether or not MSU went on to the Rose Bowl, where MSU lost 0-13. It was the first time in MSU history that a football game hasn’t been played as scheduled.

MSU’s student yearbook later recognized the solemn nature of the event with this passage: “The Rose Bowl spirit died with President John Kennedy.”

50 years later

Even now, most of those who lived through Kennedy’s death recall the day vividly. Many still feel connected to the president and consider the moment a turning point in their lives.

Nitecki-Soules said Kennedy was held closely in the hearts of young people everywhere.

“It was something to do with how he was more accessible to us as a person,” Nitecki-Soules. “The age difference was not that great, and there was a lot of belief in the types of things he said, like civil rights.”

O’Connor said she still feels personally connected to him more than any other president.

“I was a freshman when he was here and when he was elected, and a senior when he was killed,” O’Connor said. “In a flash, it was all over. … The memories of what I saw on television are still very vivid in my mind. I can see them as clearly as if I’d seen them today.”

Discussion

Share and discuss “'Campus came to a grinding halt'” on social media.