How Did You Become Interested in the JFKA?

[Paul Bacon]

There are some interesting common themes in this thread:  instinctively knowing something's wrong, innate curiosity among us...  We're probably all people who, for whatever reason, have always questioned authority.  I'll bet we're all the same, somehow, in how we get through life.

I turned 11 four days after his murder.  My mother was a big JFK fan and that's why I was too.

Like Joe, I watched the wall to wall coverage that weekend.  And, like Joe, I sat watching LHO's transfer live!  And, again, like Joe, I was stunned when Ruby wacked Oswald.  I instinctively knew something was wrong and I went screaming about what happened to my mother.

I'm with Ty--I search high and low for someone else here in central New Hampshire to talk to about it.  My wife has little interest in it :>)

 

 

[Ty Carpenter]

5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

It's hard to give a concise answer Ty.  It's been a gradual thing for me.  I've mentioned some of this before on here, so may some members forgive my repetitiveness.

I just turned seven on October 30th living in Denver in the first grade.  Walked home from school for lunch, radio on, mother excited, on the phone.  Back to school, no one there except my teacher crying at her desk, go back home.  No cartoons, or Roy Rogers, all weekend, nothing to watch on TV of interest to me.  No school Monday but a funeral parade on TV watched with my parents.  Why does the horse with the empty saddle have backwards boots in the stirrups daddy?  Maybe I heard Irving, Texas on the news, where my maternal grandparents lived an it stuck in my mind as well.  But I don't remember the assassination, or the significance of it at the time.

Then nothing for years.  I never remember it being addressed, in any depth at least in high school or college.  As a high school senior in 1974 we would drive from Hurst down the new airport freeway through Irving into Dallas to get out of town.  Our turnaround was Dealy Plaza, not because of the JFKA but that was down town.  Get off Stemmons Freeway at Commerce, under the triple overpass merging left onto Main to Houston, left to Elm then left on it past the TSBD down to the triple overpass again and back onto Stemmons west bound.  I knew that's where "it" happened but the importance didn't register.  Somewhere around that time I started reading the newspaper and the Fort Worth Star Telegram would still have an article now and then, maybe something on the TV news or a magazine.  Doubt about Oswald acting alone began to creep in.  I'm sure I saw some things in the news about the House Sub Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970's.

Then nothing again to speak of until the late 1980's and a dam cracked.  Mafia did it books.  But then a re issue of Seth Kantor's The Ruby Cover Up, High Treason and Crossfire.  Which led to JFK the movie for me.  I'd never seen the Zapruder film.  It was confusing and intriguing. 

I discussed it with Mike at work who lived in Irving not too far from the Paine house, we went to Dealy Plaza and the new Sixth Floor museum.  Another friend at work, Tony rented and lived in the Paine house.  I suggested a party there on the 30th anniversary in 1993.  Where Mike and another guest escorted Tony into the living room  holding his arms and I shot him with a cap gun to rousing applause as he said "Jack!". 

Still not much more (for me) until the internet came along where I discovered a few more books like Best Evidence and Destiny Betrayed along with people like Mark Lane and Col. Fletcher Prouty.

Finally about a year before the 50th anniversary in of the assassination in 2013 I found Jeff Morley's  JFKFacts website and began to eventually comment and converse there with others like Leslie Sharp and John McAdams.  The moderator was frustrating to deal with and looking around I stumbled across this site.  After reading along a few years I joined to make a comment about the Paine house and was encouraged by another member to comment further about his article on the Vietnam war.

Which has led to profound enlightenment from multiple researchers, authors and commentators.   Thank you to the owners and moderators of the site.  This place is Historical imho.

 

 

 

Ron,

I second your statement on the importance of this forum. I used to lurk/read on other forums, now I don't even bother. No other site out there can match the quality of discussion found here.

[Ty Carpenter]

1 hour ago, Paul Bacon said:

There are some interesting common themes in this thread:  instinctively knowing something's wrong, innate curiosity among us...  We're probably all people who, for whatever reason, have always questioned authority.  I'll bet we're all the same, somehow, in how we get through life.

I turned 11 four days after his murder.  My mother was a big JFK fan and that's why I was too.

Like Joe, I watched the wall to wall coverage that weekend.  And, like Joe, I sat watching LHO's transfer live!  And, again, like Joe, I was stunned when Ruby wacked Oswald.  I instinctively knew something was wrong and I went screaming about what happened to my mother.

I'm with Ty--I search high and low for someone else here in central New Hampshire to talk to about it.  My wife has little interest in it :>)

 

 

Agreed, Paul. And to take it further, I assume we all like to know how things work in any facet of our lives. Whether that be how your car works, how the the global financial system works or how the JFKA went down.

[Sean Coleman]

In 1995 I was backpacking round S.E. Asia on a shoestring and there was always a lot of time to kill-with books in English a valuable commodity to swap with other travellers-you’d read anything to cure the boredom and stay in touch with reality.

9 months in, we found ourselves staying at the “Shangrila Guest House” on Samosir, a tiny island on lake Toba, in Indonesia. In the (very very) rainy season. With nothing to read. Guest houses usually had a communal bookshelf for old books and newspapers to give and take and this particular place had the usual (boring) crumpled Time magazines, India Times, ripped Mills n Boon novels and……….this…

…crusty,old,boring looking book. 
So I started to read. And it was really interesting, a good read…with a few anomalies…and,hold on….that doesn’t add up…..and then,whoa that can’t be right!….and I remember being astounded. It was all there in black and white! I even wondered if I was the only person who had noticed the absurdity of it (!!). Especially as I was a total virgin to the JFKA-yes I’d heard of LHO and the jokey references to “the grassy knoll” but I was as unbiased as an unbiased thing. And still saw it for the farce it is. 
Then a friend gave me “Crossfire” and BOOM! the addiction properly kicked in. Don’t think I’ve read a non fiction book since? What’s the point?

Strange though, no one would listen or take  my new found interest seriously. They still don’t. 

[Sean Coleman]

Ooos,Fiction! Not non fiction 

[Andrew Prutsok]

I honestly cannot recall when I was not interested in it. 

[Kishan Dandiker]

Watched JFK as a teen but only became interested after reading On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison when I was 18. I remember reading it at lunchtime at school engrossed. As Stone has said, it read like a thriller, only the case and its characters were all real. While studying in Ireland I found a copy of Gaeton Fonzi's Last Investigation I the university library and I thought it was as impressive (if not more) than Garrison's book. Surprisingly, I laughed quite a lot - mainly at the absurdity of some of the situations Fonzi, Tanenbaum and others went through. 

[Joe Bauer]

6 hours ago, Kishan Dandiker said:

Watched JFK as a teen but only became interested after reading On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison when I was 18. I remember reading it at lunchtime at school engrossed. As Stone has said, it read like a thriller, only the case and its characters were all real. While studying in Ireland I found a copy of Gaeton Fonzi's Last Investigation I the university library and I thought it was as impressive (if not more) than Garrison's book. Surprisingly, I laughed quite a lot - mainly at the absurdity of some of the situations Fonzi, Tanenbaum and others went through. 

On The Trail Of The Assassins was a book I also read.

And Garrison made me laugh often.

His analogy about the bull fighting business idea. The failed attempt to trap him in a phony homosexual sting in the men's room at the L.A. airport. His colorful descriptions of characters like Dean Andrews, Jack Martin, Guy Bannister, David Ferry, etc.

[W. Niederhut]

18 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

It's hard to give a concise answer Ty.  It's been a gradual thing for me.  I've mentioned some of this before on here, so may some members forgive my repetitiveness.

I just turned seven on October 30th living in Denver in the first grade.  Walked home from school for lunch, radio on, mother excited, on the phone.  Back to school, no one there except my teacher crying at her desk, go back home.  No cartoons, or Roy Rogers, all weekend, nothing to watch on TV of interest to me.  No school Monday but a funeral parade on TV watched with my parents.  Why does the horse with the empty saddle have backwards boots in the stirrups daddy?  Maybe I heard Irving, Texas on the news, where my maternal grandparents lived an it stuck in my mind as well.  But I don't remember the assassination, or the significance of it at the time.Then nothing for years.  I never remember it being addressed, in any depth at least in high school or college. 

 

Gee, Ron, your experience is strikingly similar to mine.

I, too was in the first grade in Denver on 11/22/63, and I remember going home for lunch that day, then walking back to school and noticing that some joker had lowered the American flag on the flag pole in front of the school.  (I didn't know anything about flying flags at half-mast.) I walked up to the flag pole and started to raise the flag, and our school principal came walking down the front steps of the school and quietly told me to leave the flag alone and proceed to my classroom for an announcement from my teacher.

I remember watching some of the incessant television coverage and the funeral procession on T.V., and learning that Caroline Kennedy was my age.   I also remember Oswald being shot in the stomach, and looking at the Dealey Plaza photos in Life magazine.   I simply assumed that Oswald was crazy, some sort of Commie, and that he shot Kennedy in the back of the head.  I thought Ruby killed Oswald because he was upset and angry about Kennedy's murder.

Then, for some strange reason, I never really studied the issue in any depth for the next 50+ years, and I simply assumed that Oswald had killed JFK.

My wife also simply believed, until recently, that Oswald killed JFK-- but there's a footnote.  Her father's best friend was Rev. Louis Saunders, the "liberal" minister who conducted Oswald's funeral (after no one else volunteered.)  She, literally, grew up with the Saunders family in Fort Worth, and Rev. Saunders presided at our wedding, 25 years after Oswald's funeral.  I never asked Louis about Oswald's funeral, when he was still alive, because I hadn't begun to question the Warren Commission narrative at the time.

[Ron Bulman]

The preacher who volunteered to minister Oswald's  funeral when no one else would conducted your wedding?  That's a unique connection to the assassination that might stir interest in it, maybe even subconsciously 

[Denny Zartman]

23 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Another friend at work, Tony rented and lived in the Paine house.

That's really neat.

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

The preacher who volunteered to minister Oswald's  funeral when no one else would conducted your wedding?  That's a unique connection to the assassination that might stir interest in it, maybe even subconsciously 

Ron,

     Another thought about this thread subject.  I wonder if our mutual lack of curiosity about the JFK assassination was partly due to the fact that we were too young in 1963 (first grade) to really grasp what was going on.  Conversely, many of the forum members here were old enough to suspect early on that something was rotten in Denmark.

Edited August 6, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

12 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ron,

     Another thought about this thread subject.  I wonder if our mutual lack of curiosity about the JFK assassination was partly due to the fact that we were too young in 1963 (first grade) to really grasp what was going on.  Conversely, many of the forum members here were old enough to suspect early on that something was rotten in Denmark.

Yes I think age was a factor.  I don't remember much else from that period or younger.  Doing the splits on the playground by accident.  Trying to climb a rope in the gym.  The Blue Angels flying over, watching the Disney hour Sunday evenings?  My wife, who's worked in child care all her life insists children of 3-4 retain memories.  I've wondered before if children younger than us at the time might not remember traumatic memories, loss of a sibling, close friend, parent or grandparent.  If I'd seen Ruby shoot Oswald would suspicion have stuck in my mind at a younger age?

I also have to wonder in my case if it wasn't due in part to a lack of focus on the subject, maybe deliberately.  I don't remember it being discussed by my parents in front of me, I feel sure they did so between themselves, with friends as well.  They were not politically active, involved.  I know my dad voted.  He said he voted Republican once for Eisenhower, as he was an Army General in WWII and dad was a Army soldier at the end of it.  I've long thought that meant he voted for JFK in 1960.  I wish I'd asked him about it,  him and mother about that whole weekend.  I digress.  As an only child no older siblings were talking about it.  Enough with the public self introspection. 

Your post made me google "age children retain long term memory".  Among more interesting looking articles was this one.  Earlier memories wiped out y growth, lifetime memories starting around age seven.  I'd just turned seven less than a month before.

Birth Of Memory: Why Kids Forget What Happened Before Age 7 (popsci.com)