A Day When They Killed JFK, 1963
The Time Travel Series
The Time Travel Series - Daily Episode Guide: using AI to relive past events.
On the morning of November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy -- the 35th President of the United States, 46 years old, tanned, reddish-brown haired, privately suffering from Addison’s disease and debilitating chronic back pain concealed beneath a surgical corset and elastic bandages he wrapped daily around his legs and hips -- awoke in Suite 850 of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth. He was one day through a two-day political fence-mending trip to Texas. It was a state he had to carry in the 1964 election.
His wife Jacqueline, 34, elegant and French-educated, had reluctantly joined the trip -- her first extended domestic political outing since the death of their premature son Patrick in August.
The President had asked Jackie to wear the pink Chanel-style suit he loved: a raspberry-pink double-breasted jacket with navy collar, matching skirt, and pillbox hat, telling her, “There are going to be all these rich Republican women at that lunch, wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets. Show these Texans what good taste really is.”
November 22, 1963 | 7:55 AM CST | Hotel Texas, Suite 850, Fort Worth, Texas
Standing at the rain-streaked window of his eighth-floor suite, the Presidentstares down at a parking lot where a wooden platform and microphone await. Outside, several thousand people have gathered in a light drizzle, many having stood since before dawn. He turns to his aide Kenny O’Donnell: “If someone wanted to get you, it wouldn’t be very difficult.” He is wearing his surgical corset, laced tight against his spine, the elastic bandage twisted in a figure-eight around his legs. He pulls on a white striped Brooks Brothers shirt, buttons it slowly. He’s seen the morning edition of the Dallas Morning News, which contains a full-page, black-bordered advertisement accusing him of treason. “We’re going into nut country today,” he tells O’Donnell. He remarks, for the first time but not the last, that it would not be a very difficult job to shoot the president of the United States.
November 22, 1963 | 8:45 AM CST | Crystal Ballroom, Hotel Texas, Fort Worth, Texas
