Jay Patterson ’65 is a retired attorney and judge in the Dallas area. As many of us did last week, he answered the question, “Where were you when President Kennedy was killed?” Jay’s comments in The Dallas Morning News posted on November 22:
Jay Patterson, Lake Highlands: “Like most people, I do have a specific recollection. I was editor of our college newspaper headed in the car from Crawfordsville, Ind., to Carbondale, Ill., with the editor of the yearbook for a weekend publications conference at Southern Illinois University. We were driving in the rain. I remember the windshield wipers like a metronome counting out the beat as each successive radio report got worse and worse.
It was a dramatic and dismal time. When we arrived at Southern Illinois students were standing around the campus crying and bewildered by what had happened. When we returned to Wabash College in Indiana, six of us piled in a car and drove through the night to attend the funeral for the president in Washington, D.C. When it was over, we loaded back into the car and drove through the next night to return to the college.
Thanksgiving week followed so we could collapse exhausted at our homes. I wrote a report for the college paper, the Bachelor, describing the experience. I think as a college student the thing I missed most was President Kennedy’s wit at his news conferences.”
Thank you, Jay.
Photo courtesy of Getty/AFP, Mark Wilson
