Memories of Kennedy strong 45 years later

LYNN – It happened 45 years ago but the memories are so clear and haunting to Tom Costin today that the former mayor and postmaster recites them with precise clarity.”I was home, having a sandwich. My wife had the TV on and I heard three words: ‘Kennedy. Dallas. Shot.’ I wept.”For Thomas P. Costin Jr. and people around the world, John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a day of shock never erased from memory.Click here to see a photo gallery of President John F. Kennedy and the assassination.For Costin, it was also the day a whirlwind of hatred that had been building up in Texas finally touched down.He was one of three postal officials sent south in early November 1963 to enforce a White House mandate ending decades of segregation in federal buildings.By the time the trip ended, Costin and his associates logged seven instances in which individuals they encountered used the words “shot,” “assassinate” or “kill.”Costin reported the threats to top Kennedy aide Kenneth O’Donnell who showed him a file of letters containing similar threats. O’Donnell assured Costin that Jacqueline Kennedy’s presence in late November in Dallas and the new presidential limousine with its bullet-proof glass “bubble top” would keep the president safe.History would prove him wrong.Costin remains convinced that rogue Central Intelligence and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents along with organized crime figures and disgruntled oil investors are to blame for Kennedy’s death.”It was a conspiracy, I don’t care what anybody says.”No matter where they were 45 years ago or what they were doing, Americans 50 remember Nov. 22, 1963.Bob Picano remembers the shock and the silence. Ned Scigliano cried in his Army barracks bunk. Gerry O’Day invited friends over to watch it all on television.The president visited the Army base where Scigliano was stationed and Scigliano still has a grainy color photo of Kennedy’s open-top limousine driving past assembled soldiers.Scigliano said Kennedy was especially popular with Germans in the western part of the then-divided nation who, following his death, wore Kennedy half-dollars on ornamental silver chains.The late president was less popular with some Americans like Scigliano’s Army sergeant from Tennessee who cheered at the news of Kennedy’s death. Scigliano threw himself on his bunk and wept.”Everyone adored him.”Michael Lauranzano was in his fourth-grade class at Beverly’s Hardie School when the principal walked in and broke the news.”By the time I got home, my mother was crying. In 10 minutes, Cronkite announced he was dead. Everyone in our generation knows where they were that day.”Picano recalled how news of Kennedy’s death silenced automobile horns and school hallways and clustered girls together in tearful knots.”There was an eerie feeling all around, like another world.”O’Day, like most Americans, watched the assassination drama unfold, first with news of Kennedy’s death announced by a somber Walter Cronkite and other newscasters followed by the shock of Kennedy killer Lee Harvey Oswald’s shooting on national television.Neighbors and friends who did not own televisions gathered in her Rockingham Street house to watch the funeral.”I watched the whole week,” she said.