The headline must have landed like a punch to the gut. Or a blow to the heart.
“KENNEDY DEAD.”
In letters nearly 3 inches high, these two words ran in bold type across the entire width of the Ontario Daily Report’s front page on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963.
Kennedy had been shot in Dallas at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time, his death confirmed 68 minutes later. The staff of the Report, an evening paper, hastily assembled a new front page with the day’s big news before press time, allowing the paper to land in driveways as usual around dusk.
Surely nearly everyone who subscribed to the newspaper, a precursor to today’s Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, was already aware of the news via radio, TV or word of mouth. Regardless, imagine trudging out to retrieve your newspaper, peeling off the rubber band and being confronted with that heart-stopping headline.
In newsroom lingo, that presentation was colloquially called “second-coming type.” In other words, it was the typeface reserved for the largest news anyone could imagine. The assassination of a U.S. president merited it.
I own a copy of this Daily Report and the following two editions. John Kramer gave them to me. A decade ago, I’d solicited reader memories of Nov. 22, 1963 for the event’s 50th anniversary. Kramer emailed me a photo of himself holding the newspaper.
His story, he said, “was nothing spectacular. I was a senior in high school and home sick that day. I was able to watch the news from the start. I saved the Daily Report from that day.”
A few months ago, Kramer came by to see me. He gifted me those papers and some others, which were laid flat inside a couple of plastic grocery bags. He was cleaning out and thought the papers might be useful for me.
I took them home and kind of forgot about them. Over the weekend, moving things around, I rediscovered them. Then it occurred to me that my next column would run on the assassination’s 60th anniversary.
So here we are.
For its Nov. 22 edition, the Report relied on early stories by the Associated Press and United Press International wire services.
“President John F. Kennedy, thirty-sixth president of the United States, was shot to death today by a hidden assassin armed with a high-powered rifle,” the main story begins. “Kennedy, 46, lived about an hour after a sniper cut him down as his limousine left downtown Dallas.”
Paragraph six: “The First Lady cradled her dying husband’s bloodsmeared head in her arms as the presidential limousine raced to the hospital. ‘Oh, no,’ she kept crying.”
America cried with her.
The only local reaction in that edition was that St. George’s Catholic Church would recite the Rosary that night at 7:30 p.m. and hold two Masses the following morning. Kennedy was our first Catholic president.
And the Editorial Page led with a short editorial: “Stand Fast, America.”
“Without exception,” it reads in part, “the first reaction everywhere in the West End as the news spread is one of disbelief. It is one thing to criticize the President, to dislike or hate his political or social policies, but it is something else entirely to seek to kill the Chief Executive of the United States. Only a vicious and warped mind would undertake that.”
The editorial ends: “Regardless of what has gone before, now is the time for every American to close ranks as Americans, and stand fast.”
In the newsroom, they must have been moving fast. How hastily was this issue assembled? There wasn’t time to change everything.
And so Page 3 has a photo of a smiling Jackie Kennedy, her grinning husband behind her, accompanying a report from their Nov. 21 stop in Houston. A story reports on the president’s speech Thursday night — headline: “Kennedy Lashes ‘Ignorant’ Foes” — and from his speech in Dallas on Friday morning.
Another story is headlined “Debt Hike Waits JFK Signature.”
The first rough draft of history, as newspapers have been called, can be plenty rough.
The Report published Monday through Friday evenings and Sunday mornings. That means there was no paper on Saturday, Nov. 23. I have the Sunday, Nov. 24 edition, and it gives a sense of the disruption to daily life.
Interfaith services would take place in Ontario and Upland at 4 p.m. that day, with a larger such service on Monday at Gardiner Spring Auditorium in Ontario.
Monday would be the day of Kennedy’s funeral. America would largely shut down that day out of respect.
Schools, city halls and county, state and federal offices would all be closed. So would stores and most banks. No mail would be delivered. Grocery stores would close during the funeral. Local government meetings were canceled.
All regular TV programming was pre-empted for Kennedy coverage through Monday. Drive-in theaters were closed Monday in Riverside, Ontario and Montclair. (But that night you could see “Lawrence of Arabia” at Ontario’s Ritz, “McLintock!” at Pomona’s United Artists and “Walt Disney’s Big Red” at Upland’s Grove.)
Mayors issued statements.
“History must record this as a black day in the progress of mankind,” said Mayor Charles Latimer of Ontario.
The chair of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in 1963 was a woman, Nancy E. Smith.
“It behooves everyone who calls himself an American,” Smith said, “to do his utmost to carry on with what the President has started and to remember in the words of another great American who met the same fate, this is still a country ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’ “
Reporter Dee Ridpath spoke to people in downtown Ontario on Nov. 22 for a story that appeared Nov. 24. They were reeling.
Wrote Ridpath: “Women interviewed in the downtown were moved to tears and men expressed opinions indicating that they considered the act an outrage to fair play and common decency.”
A real-estate salesman, Glen Gaulke, said: “I didn’t believe it was possible for such a thing to happen in our country.”
Grace Davis, manager of the lunch counter at Gemmel’s Drugs, said: “I think it is terrible. There’s going to be trouble. I feel inside like sitting down and crying.”
David Allen knows the feeling Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.