My wife Pat and I were getting ready to grill steaks Saturday night when we began receiving the news alerts about the assassination attempt on former President and Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Fortunately, former President Trump survived, though he suffered an injury from the attempt on his life. The Secret Service shot and killed the assassin.
Tragically, one man attending the rally with his family died as the result of the assassin’s bullets being fired, and two other men were critically injured. On Monday it was reported those two men’s condition had improved, thank goodness.
When the news first broke, Pat and I watched the television reports and we continued watching what was unfolding in Butler, Pa. Eventually, but much later than anticipated, we ate our steaks that night.
We continued to watch the coverage throughout most of Saturday evening and didn’t go to bed to around midnight I guess.
Sunday morning Pat said she had trouble getting the events that occurred Saturday afternoon off her mind as she slept that night. I agreed, telling her every time I woke up I thought about what had taken place and how lucky that more people were not injured or killed, including the former President.
Saturday’s assassination attempt starkly reminded me of Nov. 22, 1963, the day when then President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
I was 15 years old at the time, a sophomore at McGuinness High School. I’ll never forget that day where I was as I first heard the news.
Our speech and debate students were in Enid on the campus of what was Phillips University that day and until noon Saturday competing against other schools around the state.
I was heading to give a speech and my speech teacher, a man named Sam Waken, stopped me. He gave me the news that our President had been shot in Dallas. At the time, he didn’t know President Kennedy had actually died.
Icontinuedmakingmywaytoacollegeclassroom where I was to give my speech and as I walked in the students were all tuned to the radio listening to the latest reports on what had occurred just several minutes before. The judge for my speech was a college instructor and I’m not sure she paid a lot of attention to what I was saying.
For sure, the college students completely ignored me. But that’s all right, I guess, given what had happened and was continuing to unfold in Dallas.
It was hard for me to give my speech that day and it was even more difficult as the day progressed to compete in that speech and debate tournament. Friday night most of our McGuinness students huddled around theTVset in one of the hotel rooms where we were staying to continue watching the updates throughout the evening.
I remember I and my partner had a debate Saturday morning. We lost that one, it was just hard to focus on the business at hand.
I was too young to comprehend what all had taken place. Oh, I understood our President had been assassinated all right, but the ramifications of it were just a little over my head.
One thing I was sure of, however, and that was what had happened in Dallas that day was a great tragedy in our nation’s history.