Isabelle Rodgers said she was making lunch at her home in Kinston, when a friend came over crying and told her the president had been shot.
“I was lost, I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
She said the entire town became somber.
“There was an aura of deep sadness over the town that day. So much discontent, not knowing what was going to happen or what was next. I think the whole country had expressed so much hope in the Kennedy regime because he was so young,” Rodgers said.
Nancy Gladson said she was driving to Pink Hill to visit her newborn nephew when she heard the news.
“It seemed like the whole world had a cloud come down over it. It was just so sad.” she said.
Gladson said the assassination united the town.
“That day it didn’t matter whether you were a Republican, Democrat or Independent, your president had been shot,” she said.
Isaiah Chadwick said he was in a corn field in La Grange when he learned of the assassination.
“I had a transistor radio in my pocket and heard the news. I felt faint and surprised,” he said.
Stephen Mazingo, Lenoir County Public Schools Superintendent, said he was a seventh grader at Richlands K-12 School, when an announcement was made over the intercom.
“I remember having a very uncertain feeling about what this meant. It was also during the time when we had the Cuban missile crisis, everyone was on edge and we were wondering if the world was coming to an end. All of those were the questions going through an adolescent’s mind, and I think a lot of folks were thinking about that at the time,” he said.
Brantley Briley, president of Lenoir Community College, said he vividly remembers the events which took place when he was in fifth grade at Lewis Elementary School.
“Shortly after lunch, an announcement was made over the intercom, and we realized the president had been shot. My teacher immediately got up from her desk and started assigning homework. About that time the principal said school was dismissed,” Briley said.
He said he rode his bike home to tell his family the news.
“When I got home, my mother and brother had the TV on and of course they knew what I knew about the president being shot. By then they were announcing that he had died. It was all anyone did the whole weekend, was watch all of the news surrounding the killing of JFK,” he said.
Jones County Commissioner Sondra Ipock Riggs said the news did not sit well with her.
“It made me sick. I hate to see anyone murdered like that,” she said.
She said the president’s death rocked citizens in Pollocksville.
“Everyone was devastated, because at the time, we had never lived through an assassination of a president,” she said
Reece Gardner said he was 27 at the time and was at his Gardner Construction Company office in Kinston when Kennedy was killed. He said he had a lot of questions running through his head in the aftermath.
“I was wondering about the continuity of the office, wondering about the capability of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to assume that position,” he said.
Two days later, on Nov. 24, Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on live television. Kinston residents also remember this event with vivid detail.
“My family went to my grandma’s house and we were watching the TV, when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot. He was pretty much murdered right on TV,” Briley said.
Rodgers said Oswald’s death left a lot of questions unanswered.
“There were so many facts killed with him, and we’d never know what made Oswald do that,” she said.
In the news
The headline was large, and in capital letters: “PRESIDENT KILLED.”
The Free Press, a member of the United Press International wire service and an afternoon paper at the time, was on deadline when the dramatic news from Texas was broadcast across the nation and the world.
Below the headline, a centered photograph of Kennedy — laughing and clapping at an event in Fort Worth earlier in the trip — appeared to the left of the UPI dispatch from Dallas.
The lead sentence read, “President Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassination today as he drove through downtown Dallas in an open car with Texas Gov. John B. Connally.”
The story mentioned “three loud bursts,” believed to come from an automatic rifle, shortly before Kennedy and Connally were hit. An investigation later determined Oswald used a bolt-action Italian carbine.
But, like the rest of America, The Free Press was dramatically caught off-guard by the assassination of the president.
The paper, sporting slogans like, “America’s Premier Small City Daily,” and “Evening Hours are Reading Hours,” had to turn on a dime to adapt to the breaking news, as most stories were ready for delivery on what was believed to be an otherwise uneventful Friday.
Sandwiched in between Kennedy’s photo and the wire service report of his assassination was a story reporting U.S. Rep. Tom Steed, D-Okla., was upset the Senate wouldn’t let members of Congress send mail for free.
According to the story, “Steed, annoyed by the Senate’s stand against free mailing privileges for congressmen, told a newsman a few weeks ago that the Senate had some privileges of its own. He mentioned that he knew of two call girls on an unspecified senator’s payroll.”
The front page also declared that organizations with floats in UNC’s annual “Beat Dook” parade abided by the “Keep it Clean” theme, as some floats in the 1962 parade were deemed inappropriate.
And while a story about Tran Van Tung — a former supporter of deposed South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem — speaking at N.C. State was on one side of the front page, under Kennedy’s photo was a report that a world poultry trade dispute dubbed the “chicken war” reached a conclusion.
Inside the paper, on the editorial page a short aside at Kennedy read, “About the only non-political thing pertaining to President Kennedy’s current trip through Texas is that it did not occur during a general election year.”
Then nearly all the way toward the back, a short missive out of Washington gave the air of the same hope and eye toward progress and the future that greeted Kennedy’s ascendance to the presidency.
It read, “President Kennedy sends recorded greetings to the people of Japan today via the relay communications satellite in the first television program ever flashed across the Pacific.”
Noah Clark can be reached at 252-559-1073 and Noah.Clark@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @nclark763. Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.