A Curious Discovery: An Entrepreneur's Story

by John S. Hendricks

Less than three months after the integration of the schools in Huntsville, my childhood hero was shot in Dallas, Texas. That Friday, November 22, 1963, Mrs. Collier’s voice came over the school speaker system right after my class returned from lunch. The president, she announced, had been shot in Texas, and she was dismissing all of us from school. As I raced home, I focused on the word shot. Perhaps he had just been wounded. I cut through a yard on Barbara Drive to get home quicker. I had to get to our television set. I was home in less than five minutes. No one was there. My father and mother both worked and generally did not come home until about 5 p.m. But my adult cousin John Howell lived next door with his wife, Darlene, and their three children. Darlene kept an eye on me each afternoon after school until my parents arrived. Her boys, David and Rodney, were arriving home from school as well and she asked if I wanted to watch the news with them. I said no. For some reason, I wanted to watch it alone. When I turned the TV set on, it was already tuned to CBS. Walter Cronkite was hurriedly sorting through real-time reports from Dallas. He recapped what facts he knew about the shooting. Then, as I watched in growing horror, rumors that the president was dead began to appear in reports from the field. Cronkite was careful to say that these reports had not been confirmed. But then Cronkite reported that a priest had given the president the last rites. Next, correspondent Da...