'Silent tears': Stories from the day that JFK was killed

It seems everyone who is old enough can recall vivid details of where they were 50 years ago Friday.

The killing of President John F. Kennedy left a mark on the nation's collective memory.

The Tribune-Review asked readers to tell their stories from Nov. 22, 1963. Western Pennsylvania answered.

Learning on the job

Rita Babash and her co-workers returned from lunch to their office in the accounting department at Koppers Co., Downtown.

“Our boss came in and said that the president had been shot. In that instant I thought the president of Koppers Co.,” said Babash, 71, of the North Side. “I remember everyone talking at once, how, where, is he OK, how bad. My desk was by the window, and I remember watching the flag at the federal post office, across the street.

“Sometime around 2 p.m. the flag was lowered, and I knew that the president was dead.”

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Liz Goodwin of Delmont was student-teaching a French class in Danville to finish her program at Bloomsburg University when she had to tell students the president had been wounded.

“It was strange to me that some of the students laughed, but I thought later that they didn't know how to react because nothing like this had happened in their/my lifetime,” she said.

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Gus Kalaris worked a winter job, away from his Gus & Yiayia's food cart in West Park.

“I made screens for fireplaces and was installing one in a house in Fox Chapel,” said Kalaris, 81, of the North Side. “I was in the basement and the house lady was there too and she was ironing. She had the TV on. It was on the TV.”

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The telegraph typist at Rust Engineering Co. broke the initial news to her co-workers, including Pat Madden.

“All the engineers and men ran to their cars, since we had no radios in the office, and the parking lot was filled with men listening to their radios,” said Madden, 72, of Penn Hills. “We all were told by Mr. Rust that we should go home and listen to the news. We walked over the bridge going into the North Shore where most of us walked to and from to work. There was no talking, just tears, and sadness.”

‘Silent tears'

Janet Biertempfel had her tonsils out the morning of Nov. 22 and could not speak when her mother and brother came to deliver the news at St. John's Hospital in the North Side.

“I can remember crying silent tears and trying to scream,” said Biertempfel, 71. “ Nurses, patients and visitors alike were kneeling down and praying.”

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They didn't tell Gail Macdonald what happened at school. She got home to find her family crying upstairs

“I asked what was going on, and I was told, ‘Someone shot President Kennedy.' Apparently I was not much impressed with this news,” said Macdonald, 57, of Moon. “In an effort to make me understand the tragedy, my mother said, ‘Think about it this way: Caroline Kennedy is about your age, and her daddy was killed today.' This really hit home.”

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“The thing that stood out to me was the automatic silence in the class,” Carl Tipton, 63, of Irwin said about the moments after a teacher rushed into his seventh-grade classroom at Westinghouse High School in Homewood.

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Norbert Bakas and his wife were fishing on an ocean pier in Florida with about 75 other people when word came across the portable radio he carried that the president was dead.

“The sun was shining but it got real gloomy,” said Bakas, 90, of West View. “All the fishermen pulled their lines in and walked off like zombies. All the people left the beach.”

The Bakases returned to Norbert's father's home in Titusville, Fla., within sight of the space center that a week later President Johnson would rename for Kennedy.

Duty still calls

It was early evening in Carterton, England, where Fred Vornbrock's father was stationed in the Air Force. “Bewitched” started on the TV and the baby-sitter arrived to allow Vornbrock's parents to attend a military ball.

“Suddenly, a picture of JFK came on the TV screen and the announcer somberly proclaimed, ‘President Kennedy is dead.' With his black-and-white picture still being displayed on this British TV channel, the U.S. national anthem began to play,” said Vornbrock, 58, of Hempfield. “Our baby-sitter started crying, saying, ‘Oh no…' as she was Catholic and couldn't believe what she was hearing. None of us could. Dad came into the room all decked out in his formal mess dress asking what was going on, and upon hearing the shocking news, I saw him grimace, as if in pain.”

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Most families gathered around televisions for days after the assassination. Military families ended up spending more time apart.

Bill Crytser, 83, of Coraopolis got a hug from his wife, Jean, after he saw the news on TV at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where he was serving in the Army.

“I didn't see her or my five kids for a few days, though, because we were put on alert,” he said. “I spent a couple days in the desert on guard.”

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Walter Johnson of Ligonier was on his way home from boot camp at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Ill.

“We had two busloads of recruits heading home and someone on the other bus had a radio,” wrote Johnson, 67. “As we pulled into Chicago's O'Hare Airport he came running back to our bus before we could unload and told us that the president had just been shot in Dallas. The bus, as I remember it, became very quiet.

“After I had checked in at the United Airlines desk along with all my shipmates we sat in the aisles of the airport on our duffel bags watching the events of the day unfold on TV. The airport had converted a lot of the monitors over to broadcast the local channels covering the events.”

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The clanging of teletype bells shattered a normal evening in the U.S. Naval Communications Facility in London, where Petty Officer Jim Rodgers was stationed as a radioman.

“The signal of five bells … alerts the operator that a flash message follows, which occurred just after 7:35 p.m.,” said Rodgers, 77, of Cranberry. “This message read ‘PRESIDENT KENNEDY SHOT.'”

The next flash from Washington read “ALERT: DEFCON TWO,” Rodgers said.

“Every machine (was) clanging away, order and duty paramount, more information steadily incoming and being passed on to the officers in charge,” Rodgers said. “Then, just after 8 p.m., the flash message was received: ‘PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED.'”

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James Dixon said he saw Kennedy often at Camp David and at the Marine barracks in Washington, the famous “8th & I” where the president would review the parade. The first time Dixon guarded a hallway at Camp David, Kennedy stopped as he walked by and asked, “What's your name, Marine?”

Three weeks later Dixon returned for another four-hour shift.

“He walked right up and said, ‘Hi, Cpl. Dixon. How are you today?'” said Dixon, 72 of Hampton. “They always said he had a photographic memory.”

‘Pray for the president'

John Harpur was 12 when his principal at St. Lawrence O'Toole School in Garfield told him the president was dead.

“I was handed a single note and told to go to each of the classes with the message ... for each teacher to inform the class of the tragedy, to dismiss class, and for us all to pray for the president,” said Harpur, 62, of Pine. “President Kennedy, our first Catholic president, was very special to Catholics, but he was more so to the religious sisters.”

He visited 28 classrooms, handing the note “to the teachers, almost all of whom were sisters, and witnessed with few exceptions our teachers gasp, maybe bless themselves, and begin to cry. I waited as each teacher read or paraphrased the announcement to their class and left for the next classroom.

“For me, these sometimes stoic, stern, hooded disciplinarians became vulnerable, sensitive, sympathetic women.”

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The children living at Holy Family Institute in Emsworth were getting their hair done at the former Pittsburgh Beauty Academy when word came across the news.

“The nuns tried to keep us all calm,” said June Mroz, 56, of West View.

Even at a young age, she could remember Kennedy's visit to Holy Family the year before, and keeps a picture from it.

“I remember them rushing us around, and I remember him kissing my forehead,” she said.

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“We were all stunned, but what was particularly striking and moving was when I saw tough, mean, old Sister Gabriella with tears streaming down her cheeks,” Paul Rennie of Whitehall said about his second-grade teacher at St. Basil's Elementary School in Carrick.

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Word reached the basement study hall at the former Carnegie High School that Kennedy had been wounded. George Honchar, then a 10th-grader, remembers being told to pray for the president.

“On the way down Washington Avenue, the closest church was Holy Trinity, and the doors were always open back then,” said Honchar, 65, of Carnegie. “Dozens of kids came in to the church. We lost our innocence that day.”

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John Nyahay and his fellow third-graders were waiting for class to begin at St. Edward School in Herminie.

“Mr. Socklege, the school custodian, came in the classroom,” wrote Nyahay, 58, of Greensburg. “He whispered to our teacher Ms. Matakoski. She dropped her head. Sadly, she told us that President Kennedy had been shot and we should all pray for him.”

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Peg Bittner remembers Mother Rose's voice on the PA system at St. Joan of Arc School in Library.

“She requested that everyone come down to the church where we would all pray for the president and his family,” said Bittner, 61, of South Park. “When we came back from prayers we were told to take the next three days off during the mourning of the president's passing. We did not know how to react, happy that we got days off while at the same time sad about the president being shot along with a dose of confusion wondering who and why anyone would want to do that.”

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“It was so indoctrinated in us that he was Catholic. That was the biggest thing,” said Tom Christopher, 60, of Blairsville.

School days interrupted

“My teacher, Mr. Wukitch, was so upset by the announcement that he broke his pencil in half rather forcefully,” said Beverly Kohan, 62, of Shaler.

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“I was 14 years old and in high school history class. Our teacher was called out into the hallway and he came in with the announcement, ‘President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas,'” said John Klimcheck of Finleyville. “Then, he said, ‘Boys, you are seeing history in the making!' Sadly, he was so right.”

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Allen Clark and a fellow high school senior who drove a mini-bus slipped away from school that afternoon for some early deer hunting in Virginia. A mother hysterical with news of the president's death confronted them as they tried to get a rifle back into the house.

“We immediately knew we were in deep doo-doo because several students depended on (the friend) to get home,” said Clark, 67, of Bell Township. “We were put on probation and had to write an essay about why students shouldn't leave school without permission (probably a light sentence for that time and location).”

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John Noble was sitting in the fourth row, second seat by the window of his classroom in Oklahoma Elementary School in Dubois.

“My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Mullin, entered the classroom, crying into a tissue,” said Noble, 57, of Greensburg. “The room fell silent as she struggled to tell us that ‘President Kennedy is dead' and that we were all being sent home. In those days, most of the kids were ‘walkers' — no buses — and I remember bicycling home as fast as I could to find my mother crying in front of the television. It was the first time I can remember all of the adults crying.”

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Tom Everett took history in the basement at Youngwood Junior High.

“The announcement came over the loudspeaker,” said Everett, 62, of Greensburg. “It was total silence. There were just some whimpers. Nobody could believe this was actually happening.”

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Patrick J. Cannon was bored, watching Allegheny County Jail inmates exercise in the yard below his English class in the former Robert Morris College building, Downtown. Someone announced Kennedy had been wounded.

“I remember very clearly that my first thought was that he would be OK. He was in fact our president,” wrote Cannon, 68, of Butler. “Approximately 20 minutes after that first announcement a second message sounded that President John F. Kennedy had died from his wounds and school was cancelled for the rest of the day. I remember coming out of the front door of the college onto Forbes Avenue and hundreds of people were crying, including yours truly.”

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Edward J. Bauer was attending Our Lady of Grace School in Scott that day.

“We eighth-graders had just begun to appreciate the importance of our past and present when our history and current events teacher interrupted the Thanksgiving play that the seventh-graders were putting on for us,” wrote Bauer, of Ridge, Md. “‘Today is a day that will go down in history. President Kennedy and the governor of Texas have been shot,'” he recalled the teacher saying.

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Helen Orlando was in the fifth grade at St. John the Baptist School in Lawrenceville.

“This was a special year because the fifth- and sixth-graders were in a building outside of the school called the Ark,” wrote Orlando, 60, of Lawrenceville. “We were taking a test. All of a sudden we were told to stop. They brought in a TV on a cart. We all cried together.”

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John Russo and the other sixth-graders at his school in New Castle were outside for a play period.

“Our teacher came out and made us return to the classroom telling us that Mr. Kennedy was shot. Initially we were confused as our fifth-grade teacher was also named Mr. Kennedy,” said Russo, 60, of North Huntingdon. “We soon became aware it was President Kennedy who was shot in Dallas. It was late in the day, like 2:30, and we were dismissed shortly after.”

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The news interrupted Andy Yaremko's history class at Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill.

“The teacher took the opportunity to talk to us about other attempts on the lives of other presidents,” said Yaremko, 66, of Greensburg. “School was dismissed and most of the girls were crying and the guys were angry. I remember that all businesses except for critical needs were closed until the burial.”

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Larry Biagini and the other juniors in the last-period English class at Elizabeth-Forward High School were working in small groups that afternoon.

“Being that our group was close to the door, I saw a teacher beckoning our teacher, Ms. Miklos, to come into the hall, but didn't pay much attention to it at the time,” wrote Biagini, 66, of Chartiers Township. “We heard a relatively loud ‘Oh No' as she was outside the door, and our group stopped working, hoping to hear what prompted her saying that. When she came back into the room one could visibly see by the expression on her face that something was terribly wrong.

“With her voice cracking and her eyes welling with tears, she announced that the president had been shot in Dallas and believed to be dead. Disbelief and shock fell over the room and an eerie silence prevailed for what seemed like an eternity. Shortly thereafter the bell for final dismissal rang. Normally the end of the school day is noisy. Not so on November 22.”

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The principal of Marcia Nicol's high school in Cleveland first announced the news as classes were changing.

“It seemed so strange that he would do this while the students were clogging the hallways, and I don't think that too many people understood what had happened,” wrote Nicol, 67, of McCandless. “Once I had made it to my civics class, the principal came back on the intercom and told us the horrifying news. Many of my classmates sat in stunned silence and others were crying.”

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In the eighth grade, Michele Vanetta always stopped at the soda shop in Urbani's Pharmacy in Jeannette on the way home from Sacred Heart School.

“A bunch of us walked home and always stopped there for a cherry coke soda and we were all crying thinking how could this happen to such a great person and president,” said Vanetta, 62, of Jeannette.

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The first-graders in St. Bartholomew Catholic School in Crabtree didn't comprehend what happened, Mark Sorice recalled.

“The nuns came into class around 1:30 and excused us for the rest of the week,” wrote Sorice, 56, of Ligonier. “We did not understand and I believed that somebody cheered when they told us that we had the rest of the week off. That, as you can imagine, did not go over very well.

“We prayed for a bit before being excused. And to our teachers' credit they explained the day's events in terms we could understand, equating it to the loss of our father in a sudden unexpected way.”

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A fire drill sent students outside at what was Ramsay High School in Mt. Pleasant, recalled then-freshman Michael Gaudiano.

“Since we were outside the gym, teacher made us do a lap around the track,” said Gaudiano, 64, of Key West, Fla. “As we were finishing our lap, a large green military helicopter flew overhead. My friend said, ‘Hey maybe the president is coming to visit.' Little did we know.”

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Judy Byers remembers a teacher stopping her gym class at Schenley High School, where she was in the ninth grade.

“People were overcome. We were crying,” said Byers, 64, of Carrick. “We just never thought at that age that something like that could happen.”

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It was show-and-tell day in Donna Christ's school in Allentown and the first-grader brought in the Tiny Tears doll she got for her sixth birthday.

“The teacher was called out and was gone a while,” said Christ, 56, of Moon. “She came back and told us to take our coats and we're going home. But she didn't tell us why. Ask your parents when you get home.”