JFK, The Supremes, and three bullets in an open-top car in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
Bryce Main
Multi-genre author, mostly Crime fiction. Scottish. Been writing longer than I’ve been wearing big boy’s trousers.
The year was 1961.
The date was January 15.
Berry Gordy, ex-boxer and head of Motown Records in Detroit, Michigan, signed The Primettes, under the condition that the group’s name was changed to The Supremes.
A mere five days later, Senator John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States.
Two years later, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy (or JFK as he will forever be known), was shot and killed while riding in an open-top car in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. The assassin was a twenty-four-year-old loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine and defector to the Soviet Union. Officially.
It was a Friday and the day was warm and friendly. Until a split-second after 12.30pm, when it suddenly wasn’t.
The official verdict was that Oswald acted alone. The unofficial verdict has been the subject of heated debate ever since. Apparently, lots of people knew where he was and what he was doing.
Thousands of miles away, I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing.
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I was halfway up the back stairs of our home, in Milngavie, Glasgow, listening to the shocked, tearful voice of a radio commentator, telling me and the rest of the world that the President was dead. Assassinated. Murdered.
Ever since then, The Supremes and John F. Kennedy have been unforgettably linked in my mind.
Maybe that link started as far back as January 15th, 1961, when the four Primettes joined Motown and changed their names. ?
Maybe it hung around until five days later when Kennedy was sworn in .
Maybe it came to a tragic conclusion two years later when three bullets from a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle took the life of the supreme political leader of the 20th Century. And destroyed the dream of Camelot.
For the rest of the world, JFK and Marilyn Monroe would always be said in the same breath.
But not for me.
So…where were you and what were you doing when JFK was killed, and the world changed…?
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