Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (44 page)

My career was solid, but I made a lot of decisions based on my own need to grow. I was already reaching into the orchestral world to bring myself into doing material that was new and different. When I recorded “Pirate Jenny” from
Threepenny Opera,
it was extremely political and
extremely edgy. You had an incredible amount of choice, and it was all this bubbling talent, with this necessity to talk about things in a musical form. I always loved folk music, and I fell in love with it because of the stories, but it had personality and integrity, and it told you, “This is what’s going on in certain parts of the world with certain people.”

It’s changed our country. It made possible some of the things that have gone on since. I don’t think these things disappear. I think secrets kill. I think secrets demolish a certain central goodness in the country, and in the world, and I think they did that. I don’t think this will be settled in the American psyche until they find out names: exactly what happened and by whom. Will we ever see that? I don’t know. Certainly a lot of the information is right out there to see. There are certain things, like all the witnesses who died: dozens of people gone, unaccountably, in suicides, accidents, heart attacks, gunshots, and car wrecks—you name it. That in itself is pretty unlikely.

Our hearts were broken, and our trust was broken, so our inability to sit back and be comfortable with what was going on in the world ended in some kind of cataclysmic way. Not to mention that now the lies begin to come out. We knew there were things that weren’t right about this, the manipulation of the Zapruder film, and the fact that somewhere in there something was diabolically wrong with the story. It’s still something that preoccupies me from time to time, especially now.

Some books have come out very recently that talk about the background of these murders. One of Kennedy’s mistresses, Mary Meyer, who was Cord Meyer’s wife, was murdered the year following Kennedy’s death, and it tells us a lot about the manipulation of people who might be dangerous because they knew too much, and they certainly knew things they didn’t want us to know. All bets were off after this.

Robert De Niro

In 1963 twenty-year-old New York actor Robert De Niro had just completed his first starring role, in Brian De Palma’s
The Wedding Party
opposite Jill Clayburgh. He has since garnered numerous distinctions, including two Academy Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors. Known for collaborating with director Martin Scorsese, De Niro’s body of work includes
Bang the Drum Slowly, Casino, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather Part II, Goodfellas, The King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Midnight Run, Raging Bull, Silver Linings Playbook, Taxi Driver,
and
Wag the Dog.
He is considered one of the best actors of his generation.

I
remember that everyone I was around had a good feeling about him. I wasn’t really into politics or anything, but I also had a good feeling about him. They were an elegant couple, and that’s why there was Camelot. We were all young. Everybody was hopeful. It was before the war was getting into a darker place and everybody was opposing it, so it was a good time. It was just what it was. For me, at that age, he was a guy who looked like he’d be a good president. He was charismatic, and that’s why you noticed him. I feel the same way about Obama. He’s the same: young, optimistic, energetic, hopeful—I feel the Obamas are the closest to the Kennedy legacy.

One thing I remember very clearly was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in a classroom, going to night school at the time. I think I was eighteen. I was sitting in a history class, of all things, and hearing it on the radio. I was of the generation where you got under your desks for the air raid drill, which is totally useless, but anyway the whole class was listening to him, and I was very nervous. You felt that there could be something not good happening. I felt certainly that the world would change. I was not that aware of exactly how it would affect everything in the future. Obviously, it would.

At the time he was killed, I was on the subway, getting off on 42nd and Lexington in New York. I remember as soon as I got off the subway, people were talking, standing around, and so on. People everywhere were just standing around, kind of stunned, and I think that’s when I knew. I was stunned. One of the reasons I was so stunned, as we all were, is that he was assassinated. You just never felt that that could happen. I remember watching the funeral all weekend on television, black and white.

When he was assassinated, it was kind of like that was it. It’s over. Whatever that was, it was just over. When people say, “We lost our innocence,” in a way that could be true. You could say that. There was an end to something. You didn’t know where you were going to go after that. It makes me think of 9/11. I did whatever I had to do, but it changes everything obviously.

I used to think it was what it was, and now, being a little more aware of history and so on, I wonder if maybe there was more to it. I haven’t really read the conspiracy books. I’m aware of them, been given the gist of what they are. So I start to think,
You know, maybe there was some sort of, not necessarily a conspiracy, but something that kind of led up through all the things that Bobby Kennedy was doing—and somehow that made it possible in some way.

Sonny Jurgensen, Carl Kammerer, and Bobby Mitchell

In a controversial decision by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, games were played on the Sunday after the assassination. One of those games pitted the Washington Redskins—featuring recent 49ers transplant Carl Kammerer and former Cleveland Browns halfback-turned-flanker Bobby Mitchell—against the Philadelphia Eagles, for whom North Carolina native Christian “Sonny” Jurgensen quarterbacked, at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field. The year after the assassination, the Eagles traded Jurgensen to the Redskins, for whom he played until his retirement in 1974. Kammerer retired from the NFL in 1969, going on to work in the Office of Congressional Relations of the Department of Transportation and later at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For many years he worked with both the Special Olympics and the Wounded Warrior Project. Mitchell retired from the field in 1968 to become a pro scout for the Redskins, at manager Vince Lombardi’s behest, eventually rising to assistant general manager. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted both Jurgensen and Mitchell in 1983.

M
ITCHELL: Coming to Washington from Cleveland was a shock to me. When we’d come to Washington to play the Redskins, we’d see all the black people, just looked like for miles, and we said, “Boy, whoever comes here is going to be having it made.” I never thought it’d be me. I was shocked when it ended up being me, but I just never thought of it as a Southern city, Washington DC, I don’t know why. But then I can’t go in the restaurant? My little kids couldn’t go in the ice-cream shop. I said, “What kind of place is this?” This is Washington; the denial was just mind-boggling. I couldn’t understand it.

Sonny Jurgensen

I felt a sense of that change, though, because Bobby Kennedy and I were pretty close—from ’62 to until his death. In fact, I was invited to the White House for a state dinner, and my wife and I were wondering,
How did we get here?
because the other black couple there was Sammy Davis Jr. and May Britt. It wasn’t until much later I figured that Bobby probably told everyone about me. A big contrast: I can’t go into some restaurants, but I’m at the White House.

Carl Kammerer

We’re standing down by the East Room, and at that time the stairs from the president’s upstairs apartment were right there by the entrance to the door. It’s now been moved around to the front. People crowded when they said, “The president’s coming down the steps,” he and Jackie. I grabbed my wife, pulled her over to me, and said, “Let’s get back here.” We stood back against the wall, which was facing the steps. We were about five deep, people crowding in, and this is the honest truth: When they came down, and they were working their way through the people—now they still haven’t gone in the East Room—he walked through them as he was shaking hands and walked straight to me. He walked over to me, and he said, “We thank you for what you do.” So I knew Bobby had said something to him. There’s no other
way I’d get invited there. That was the only time I actually talked to him or was around him.

Bobby Mitchell

JURGENSEN: Just having someone that young in the White House, the family itself. The NFL was growing in leaps and bounds at that particular time. It didn’t hurt it for them to want to attend games and for Ethel Kennedy to sit in the box up here with Jack Kent Cook and Edward Bennett Williams. It helped, and I know the players were aware of that.

KAMMERER: Everybody was aware of the changes going on, but many of us were involved with the Kennedys out at their farm, watching the children competing in horse games and hanging the ribbons around their neck at the end. My wife and I were scheduled to meet with the president. This appointment was made through William “Fishbait” Miller, who was the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives for, I think, thirty-five years. He was a friend of my two roommates, Eddie and Bobby Khayat from Mississippi, and I met him through those two guys. They set up a meeting for us. Then, just as the week was progressing, the doorkeeper called me and said the president needed some more time to work on his speech and so we’ll do it when he comes back [from Dallas]. Well, he came back, but not vertically.

Joe Mooney, the groundskeeper, was always a funny, telling-jokes kind of guy. He saw some of us coming out, and he said, “Hey, the president’s been shot.” We thought,
Okay, he’s going to give us a punch line,
and then in tears he said: “No, he’s dead.” We all gathered around the radio to listen to what was going on. That was the first occasion of us hearing about the death of the president.

As far as playing or not, we pretty much would take whatever decision was made and make the best out of it. But even right up until the game itself, we weren’t sure whether we were even taking the field. The decision was made kind of late by Commissioner Rozelle to go ahead and do that. I respected the decision and supported that, but out in the stadium, here you are, you make a first
down or you do something, which normally you’d have the crowd giving some sort of response and cheer or whatever, but it was pretty quiet during the game.

JURGENSEN: When we heard about it, we were leaving practice at Franklin Field, and there was a little truck where we get something to drink, sitting up on the sidewalk for the students at the University of Pennsylvania. We heard it then, and it was a shock. We had a team meeting on Saturday night, where the discussion was whether they were even going to play the schedule of NFL games the following day. Most of the players didn’t want to play. There were other things being canceled all over the country, and here our commissioner was saying, “We’re going to go ahead and play the full schedule.” People who were fans of the president, they were very shaken by it. Other people who weren’t, they said, “We have to play football. Let’s just play football.” There was give-and-take and people hollering in the meeting and everything. It actually broke into a fight, a real battle royal—I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It just split the team. Nobody wanted to play the game.

We walk on the field, and there was no buzz in the crowd. The players weren’t motivated. You’re just going through the motions. It looked like a bad Pro Bowl game—people just kind of trotting around out there. The Redskins won 13 to 10. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where there was no emotion, no passion for playing the game, and it’s a wonder a lot of people didn’t get hurt, because that’s when you have a lot of injuries, when people aren’t going 100 percent.

KAMMERER: That particular game was quite different and quiet, reserved, downplayed. I come from kind of an old-school type of mentality, and that is: Football’s played in the rain and in the snow and in all kinds of conditions. I felt it was best to go on. But in retrospect, after many years, it easily could’ve gone the other way, and I would’ve respected that as well. We as a team dedicated the game to the president and sent the game ball off to the White House following our “major” victory.

JURGENSEN: All the teams wanted to do something, because everybody was in shock. They wanted to do something to show that we were involved and that we cared. They took a collection from each player. There was a decision made to collect some money for the Tippit family. It was just very moving not only for the football players who were in the NFL but for the entire country. None of us had ever experienced anything like that before.

MITCHELL: [A few weeks after the assassination] I received a call at home. Bobby wanted me to come to downtown Washington. We had a playground that was going to be named the John F. Kennedy Playground. It was the groundbreaking ceremony, and his office called and said he wanted me there. Well, I’m nervous because of all the stuff, and I didn’t want to go, so they said, “We’ll send a car for you.” I said, “No, no, I’ll drive.”

But I want to get to a point that was really tough for me. When Bobby arrived, I had moved to the back of the group. The mayor of Washington and Bobby were up front, and the mayor told him, “Bobby Mitchell is there, Bobby.” That’s when he told me, “Get up here. Get up here.” I came up there, and when we leaned over he said, “I want you to help me with this shovel because I’m weak.” I remember leaning over with him to pick up the dirt, and I had his arm. It felt like his arm was about that big—tiny. He was so drained, and he was shaking, and I was shaking. I’ll never forget that, what it had done to him in that very short time. We were close right on up until the end.

Mitchell, Jurgensen, Kammerer

KAMMERER: I was struck with Kennedy’s speeches and the way he put things together, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” tax reform, reductions,
and all the rest of that. I’m a conservative, and so I kind of like those points. But he touched the entire nation while he lived and profoundly after his death. Our country has moved way out on the right and way out on the left; there doesn’t seem to be somebody who’s in the middle who wants to sit down and discuss and negotiate and represent our people, our voters, our country. It seems like they’re polarized, and I don’t know how we’re going to get back.

JURGENSEN: The assassination seems like yesterday to me. It’s still fresh in my mind, and when you called us that you wanted to talk about this particular period, then it really started refreshing itself. It brings it back so much: the game itself, how the game went, people who were involved, the decisions that were made during that time. It was an experience you certainly don’t want to go through again. You see things on the Kennedys, the different members of the family, and it all flashes back to you immediately; you think of that family and what they’ve had to experience over the years, the tragedy they’ve gone through, time and time again. It’s unbelievable, the strength and the intestinal fortitude that family has and the things they have been able to overcome.