Monday, November 22, 2010

On November 22, 1963, I was watching television when it was announced that President John F. Kennedy was shot. Then a tearful Walter Cronkite announced the the President was dead. It was such a shock because he was present about 24 hours before near our barracks at Brooks Air Force Base.

President Kennedy was scheduled for a two day trip to Texas. On November 21st, he came to San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth. He died in Dallas the next day.

John and Jackie Kennedy arrived at San Antonio International Airport on November 21, 1963.

The President and First Lady are greeted at the airport.

Jackie and John Kennedy preparing for the trip south across San Antonio from the airport to Brooks Air Force Base. I was stationed there from July 1963 until January 1965.

The motorcade route across San Antonio was published in the San Antonio Express newspaper on November 20, 1963. Large crowds gathered along the way the next day. When Air Force One left the aircraft had been moved to Kelly Air Force Base (left on map). I was outside later when the airplane banked over Brooks and headed towards Houston after his speech. When the Air Force sent me to Turkey in 1961 and back in 1963, I traveled on Pan American Airlines on a Boeing 707, the same aircraft as Air Force One at that time.

President Kennedy, Jackie with Governor and Mrs. John Connely in the motorcade on Broadway, not so far from the Alamo.

President Kennedy was scheduled to speak at 2:25 pm in front of the Aerospace buildings on Brooks Air Force Base. Not so far to the right was the World War II officers' barracks where I learned about his death the next day. Two airmen shared three connecting rooms in the "temporary" wooden building. My room mate was Wade Johnson, another Radio Intercept Analyst back from Turkey, before he jumped up and married Rene. Rene and Carolyn, who came with me for the speech, worked with Wade and I at Handy Andy grocery store. The store was about midway between Brooks and Kelly on Loop 13.

President Kennedy spoke in front of four building of the Aerospace Medical Health Center which he dedicated. He talked of his vision for the "New Frontier." His youth and optimism was contagious, especially for the young people of the United States.

This is part of the crowd in front of a temporary stage set up in front of the medical center buildings.
More of the crowd. That's my reserved seat on the front row. Not really, but I'm out there somewhere.

There were not that many seats. Many people stood in the back.

Jackie Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on the platform. No one would have imagined that the next afternoon, he would be the President of the United States.
Greeting the dignitaries after the speech. Air Force One had moved to Kelly Field and soon the President and party left for Houston and then Fort Worth before the long day of traveling.
I was impressed by the President's illustration during the speech of the boys throwing their hats over a wall and their determining never giving to up.
Following is the full speech given by President Kennedy at Brook AFB on November 21, 1963:

Mr. Secretary, Governor, Mr. Vice President, Senator, Members of the Congress, members Of the military, ladies and gentlemen:
For more than 3 years I have spoken about the New Frontier. This is not a partisan term, and it is not the exclusive property of Republicans or Democrats. It refers, instead, to this Nation's place in history, to the fact that we do stand on the edge of a great new era, filled with both crisis and opportunity, an era to be characterized by achievement and by challenge. It is an era which calls for action and for the best efforts of all those who would test the unknown and the uncertain in every phase of human endeavor. It is a time for pathfinders and pioneers.

I have come to Texas today to salute an outstanding group of pioneers, the men who man the Brooks Air Force Base School of Aerospace Medicine and the Aerospace Medical Center. It is fitting that San Antonio should be the site of this center and this school as we gather to dedicate this complex of buildings. For this city has long been the home of the pioneers in the air. It was here that Sidney Brooks, whose memory we honor today, was born and raised. It was here that Charles Lindbergh and Claire Chennault, and a host of others, who, in World War I and World War II and Korea, and even today have helped demonstrate American mastery of the skies, trained at Kelly Field and Randolph Field, which form a major part of aviation history. And in the new frontier of outer space, while headlines may be made by others in other places, history is being made every day by the men and women of the Aerospace Medical Center, without whom there could be no history.
Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth.
I give you three examples: first, medical space research may open up new understanding of man's relation to his environment. Examinations of the astronaut's physical, and mental, and emotional reactions can teach us more about the differences between normal and abnormal, about the causes and effects of disorientation, about changes in metabolism which could result in extending the life span. When you study the effects on our astronauts of exhaust gases which can contaminate their environment, and you seek ways to alter these gases so as to reduce their toxicity, you are working on problems similar to those in our great urban centers which themselves are being corrupted by gases and which must be clear.
And second, medical space research may revolutionize the technology and the techniques of modern medicine. Whatever new devices are created, for example, to monitor our astronauts, to measure their heart activity, their breathing, their brain waves, their eye motion, at great distances and under difficult conditions, will also represent a major advance in general medical instrumentation. Heart patients may even be able to wear a light monitor which will sound a warning if their activity exceeds certain limits. An instrument recently developed to record automatically the impact of acceleration upon an astronaut's eyes will also be of help to small children who are suffering miserably from eye defects, but are unable to describe their impairment. And also by the use of instruments similar to those used in Project Mercury, this Nation's private as well as public nursing services are being improved, enabling one nurse now to give more critically ill patients greater attention than they ever could in the past.
And third, medical space research may lead to new safeguards against hazards common to many environments. Specifically, our astronauts will need fundamentally new devices to protect them from the ill effects of radiation which can have a profound influence upon medicine and man's relations to our present environment.
Here at this center we have the laboratories, the talent, the resources to give new impetus to vital research in the life centers. I am not suggesting that the entire space program is justified alone by what is done in medicine. The space program stands on its own as a contribution to national strength. And last Saturday at Cape Canaveral I saw our new Saturn C-1 rocket booster, which, with its payload, when it rises in December of this year, will be, for the first time, the largest booster in the world, carrying into space the largest payload that any country in the world has ever sent into space.
I think the United States should be a leader. A country as rich and powerful as this which bears so many burdens and responsibilities, which has so many opportunities, should be second to none. And in December, while I do not regard our mastery of space as anywhere near complete, while I recognize that there are still areas where we are behind--at least in one area, the size of the booster--this year I hope the United States will be ahead. And I am for it. We have a long way to go. Many weeks and months and years of long, tedious work lie ahead. There will be setbacks and frustrations and disappointments. There will be, as there always are, pressures in this country to do less in this area as in so many others, and temptations to do something else that is perhaps easier. But this research here must go on. This space effort must go on. The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know. That much we can say with confidence and conviction.
Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall--and then they had no choice but to follow them.
This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it. Whatever the difficulties, they will be overcome. Whatever the hazards, they must be guarded against. With the vital help of this Aerospace Medical Center, with the help of all those who labor in the space endeavor, with the help and support of all Americans, we will climb this wall with safety and with speed-and we shall then explore the wonders on the other side.

Thank you.