Opinion: JFK assassination cast pall over Thanksgiving ’63

Talk about it

It’s hard to believe in this mobile society, but when my wife went off to college in the fall of 1963, she didn’t expect to be home until Christmas break.

Nancy earned her nursing degree at the College of St. Catherine’s in St. Paul, Minn. St. Kate’s was an all-female college at the time, and St. Paul was an all-day drive from Chamberlain in the days before interstate highways. St. Kate’s was a long way from family and friends for a homesick freshman who used a black pen to mark off each day on the calendar between her and Christmas break.

By contrast, when I went to Creighton University the year before, I knew I’d be coming home for Thanksgiving break. I sort of wished I’d been able to catch a ride back for homecoming weekend at CHS, but that didn’t work out. A couple of weeks later, another Chamberlain kid at Creighton talked his dad into driving to Omaha and giving us a lift home for the opening Saturday of pheasant season, though. That was a marvelous surprise, if a totally rushed weekend.

The old highway along the Iowa side of the Missouri River north from Council Bluffs was one of those narrow two-lane jobs, with curbs at either side to make the driving lanes seem even narrower. The trip home took about forever, and the trip back to Omaha was twice as long. Maybe that was because for about the last 50 or so miles, you could see the night lights of Omaha reflected in the clouded sky over the city.

I admit, I was more than a little homesick my freshman year at Creighton. Whenever I see the lights of a city reflected on a black sky at night, I think of that year in Omaha. I spent a fair amount of time on Saturday and Sunday evenings sitting on the sill of my second-floor dorm room staring out at those reflections.

Still, I had a trip home in late November for Thanksgiving and a quick, surprise weekend in the middle of October to hunt. That was two more than Nancy was anticipating when her folks said their goodbyes and left her standing in front of a dorm on a college campus surrounded by a high, thick fence that featured the most forbidding set of black iron gates ever crafted.

St. Kate’s was a pretty little campus, with a wooded area and a small lake — the Dew Drop, it was called, or some such fanciful thing. The pond and the trees created a pastoral atmosphere, if you ignored the wall and the gates. I learned from a number of visits to see Nancy during her college years that the gates, which closed at some ridiculous time like 10 p.m. on weekends, were difficult to ignore.

Nancy had marked off Nov. 21 with no thought in mind but that she had a month to go until Christmas. Nov. 22 changed that. President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas that day made an entire nation rethink its plans. The shooting happened on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Many businesses, schools and other institutions closed their doors the following Monday for the formal funeral services. St. Kate’s called off classes for the entire week.

I spent much of the Friday afternoon in the journalism building. A bunch of us were huddled around the Associated Press teletype at the far end of the second-floor hallway, watching updates as they clattered in. I got back to Brown Hall and found a note from Nancy, asking if I could pick her up at the bus depot the next morning and take her to Chamberlain. I borrowed my friend John’s 1957 Chevy and did as she asked. She had a week at home with her family. I had to return to campus for a couple of days and then I got to be home with the family. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more important Thanksgiving for families to have spent together.

Every Thanksgiving at home is a good one. The Thanksgiving at home in 1963 was a necessary one.

Terry Woster’s column is published Wednesdays and Fridays in The Daily Republic.

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