Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, started like other routine days at the Deseret News. Wire news and city desk editors were already on the job by 5:30 a.m., sorting story files, checking assignments and gearing up for first (statewide) edition.
As wire editor, I began the morning by collecting and sorting wire service stories, stacking them in descending order of importance and placing them on the adjoining news editor's desk, along with news photos stripped from wirephoto machines.I was working under the direction of veteran newsman George Ford, who had begun his long career as news editor by handling the big stories at the end of World War II in the Pacific - the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
As usual, I had stripped the wires and placed stories and news schedules on Ford's desk and awaited his selection of the top stories, which he would keep to lay out Page 1 and the jump (continuation) pages.
To this mix of stories he selected the best accompanying wirephotos. What was left came back to me for filling the other inside pages allotted to the section.
The wire section of the paper was usually divided into Washington, national and world news pages. Together we edited stories and designed the pages, leaving to the copy desk the final editing, headlines and captions.
That morning, Ford decided to go with a political emphasis on Page 1 for first edition. President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to be in Texas on a fence-mending visit that day, and there was an interesting speculative piece that Kennedy was dissatisfied with his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Ford chose photos from the files to go with the LBJ story, planning to replace them in the metro (city) edition with photos of JFK's stop in Dallas.
First edition went smoothly, and we began the process of updating and freshening the news for the city edition.
About every 10 minutes or so I monitored the wires for developing news. A little after 11:30 I was about ready to make another check of the teletypes when photographer Wally Kasteler rushed from the photo lab to tell me he had heard on the radio a report that Kennedy had been shot.
At that same moment Ford was being told by a reporter that his wife had called with the same report.
As I jumped up from my desk, I heard a bell ringing on the main United Press International teletype signaling an upcoming bulletin story. As I got to the teletype I could see that a story being sent had been interrupted with: PRECEDE KENNEDY DALLAS NOV. 22 (UPI) THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.
In quick succession, after the New York bureau of UPI ordered all bureaus to get off the wire, two additional paragraphs moved telling where the incident had occurred and that Kennedy had perhaps been wounded fatally by an assassin's bullet.
This initial information was sent to the Dallas UPI bureau by senior White House correspondent Mer-ri-man Smith by radiotelephone from the press car that had been accompanying the Kennedy procession.
The time was just after 11:34 a.m. Salt Lake time (12:34 p.m. Dallas time), right on top of metro edition deadline.
At 11:41 the Dallas bureau began sending, "First Lead Shooting," a story dictated by Smith saying Kennedy had been rushed to a hospital and that Texas Gov. John Connally also had been hit. He quoted a Secret Service agent as saying the president was dead.
At this point, nothing was known of the sniper or from where the shots came. The shocking news quickly swept over the newsroom. Stunned staffers, some in tears, crowded around the news desk and teletypes, hoping that the president was alive.
Despite the confusion, Ford quickly began revamping Page 1 while the city desk mobilized to provide quick state and local reaction.
Ford ordered a 96-point headline, a size reserved only for major stories. It needed only two words: KENNEDY ASSASSINATED.
Under a deck headline - President Killed By Texas Sniper - he ran Smith's story in 14-point type for emphasis three-fourths the way down the outside two columns of Page 1, continuing it on the jump page in regular body type.
Photos of the assassination scene had not yet moved over UPI wirephoto, but Ford splashed the middle of the page with a 5-column photo of Kennedy speaking earlier in the day at Fort Worth and one of the president and Connally in the open-air car at the start of the Dallas motorcade, hoping that photos of the assassination might move momentarily.
Deadlines were stretched to handle the flood of late copy. For metro and a later street "extra," Page 1 contained a concise UPI account of the tragic events in Dallas, including information that a Dallas police officer had been killed and the suspected assassin captured after a chase in a movie theater. City desk reporters provided several stories about local reaction.
While Ford was wrapping up things on the news desk, I rushed to the Regent Street composing room two blocks away to help close out late pages and eliminate or editearlier stories that made reference to Kennedy before the tragedy.
We left the newsroom that afternoon without the usual feeling of elation that comes with handling major stories. We had gone through the mechanics of putting out metro in a state of numbness, and our emotions had finally caught up, leaving us with deep sadness. We stayed glued to the television set that evening and through the weekend, unable to detach ourselves from the terrible events.
In the next three days the Deseret News chronicled in stories and photos all the dramatic events that followed the assassination.
On Saturday, Nov. 23, Ford carried the second-day story by UPI's Smith, who was to win the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for reporting.
Photo coverage included the touching picture of the new President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, consoling Jacqueline Kennedy moments after the swearing-in; photos of Lee Harvey Oswald, the chief suspect in the assassination, the rifle used; scenes of the Texas School Book Depository Building, where Oswald had lain in wait; and the dramatic telephoto shot of Kennedy slumping over in the arms of his wife just after the assassin's bullets struck.
There was no letup for Ford. On Sunday, Nov. 24, he returned to the newsroom with two assistants to put out an afternoon edition for delivery the next morning in outlying areas of Utah. Before that day was over, which began with thousands lining up to file past Kennedy's body at the Capitol rotunda, Jack Ruby had gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald before millions of television viewers. At the request of the circulation department Ford also put out a street "extra" for sale downtown.
Ford earned a well-deserved day off Monday, Nov. 25, leaving me to sit in as news editor on the last of those four unforgettable days as Kennedy's body was borne down Washington's streets to his final resting place in Arlington Cemetery.
Page 1 was all Kennedy, as was the local B1 section page, which featured stories on Utah services honoring the fallen president and a touching piece by Deseret News political writer DeMar Teuscher, who had covered Kennedy's visits to Utah.
Relegated to an inside page were the dramatic pictures of the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald the day before. On Page 1 was a photo of a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy, walking the funeral cortege route with JFK's brothers Robert and Edward, and one of her standing near his flag-draped coffin. Inside were photos of the large delegation of foreign dignitaries that accompanied the march and weeping mourners along the route.
Perhaps the most poignant of all the photos that Monday was one of little John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin from curbside during the funeral procession. It was the youngster's third birthday. Had that photo moved earlier, it would have received much bigger play. But with metro deadline closing in, it ended up one-column size in the middle of Page 1.
A few of us who were on the news desk during those historic four days in November 1963 reminisced recently about what has happened in the 30 years since. We had been involved in coverage of momentous world events - the Vietnam War and its long aftermath, Watergate, the Civil Rights movement, the landings on the moon. Nothing, we agreed, ever matched the impact of those terrible events in Dallas. It was an emotional experience we would never forget.