Mary Finnell, a former teacher who watched President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, poses near the area where she was standing on that day in Dallas.
On Nov. 22, 1963, I was teaching third grade at St. Peter’s Academy near downtown Dallas. I was asked to chaperone part of the choir group that was walking to the motorcade route because the older nuns said they could not walk that far from the school. The students practiced a few songs they thought the president would enjoy. We walked down to the route and we waited. His caravan was just creeping along. They were waving at us; we were waving at them. We were all so very happy to see the president. We started walking back to school and all of us were happy.
When we arrived back at the school, the other teachers and students were in tears. At first, we thought that maybe they were a little bit jealous because they didn’t get to go see the president. But then we found out that he had been assassinated during the short time it took us to walk back to the school.
Those were pretty sad moments. We watched television until school was dismissed. Many days after that, we continued watching TV and kept track of the terrible things that were happening.
During this 50-year anniversary I know there will be many, many reminders of that day. Some will be sad and some will be to our advantage, showing that perhaps the world is improving a tiny bit.
