Early afternoon at The Lexington Leader, the city's evening paper, November 22, 45 years ago. Bill Hanna, the city editor, and reporter Dick Wilson were returning from lunch at Levas' restaurant. It was a goodbye event; Dick was leaving The Leader for a job in Frankfort.
"As we walked toward the elevator in the old building at Short and Market streets," Hanna remembered, "one of the ladies in the front-office staff told us the president had been shot."
Bob Fain, the telegraph editor who handled stories coming in on the Associated Press and United Press International wires, was in the composing room working with the printers to put the final edition to bed, focusing on page one and the jump page. "The intercom to the newsroom buzzed and someone told me that a bulletin had just moved on the AP wire that the president had been shot in Dallas," he said.
"We went quickly to the third-floor newsroom and learned that the decision had been made to put out an extra," Hanna said. "Bob Fain as telegraph editor would do most of the work in remaking page one for the extra."
"There was sort of a constant panic on the wires," Fain said. "The first bulletins said that the President reportedly had been shot in Dallas. Then there came new lead after new lead, followed by add after add, followed by insert after insert and followed by another new lead. The telegraph editor's job was to try to keep all that in line and make sense of it. In those days before computers this was done with paper, scissors, library paste and copy pencils. Seems impossible now."
Fain began to prepare headlines for different outcomes. The Linotype machines could set nothing larger than 48-point type. After a frantic search, old wooden type was found in a drawer not opened in years. Everybody was waiting around for news about the president's condition.
"A Marine captain, head of the USMC recruiting office nearby, came in and asked if he could read the news with us," Hanna said. "We agreed and about that time the teletype machines rang the flash bell and announced that the president was dead. I recall glancing at the Marine and seeing tears roll down his cheeks.
"We went about the business of remaking page one for the extra. Dick Wilson agreed to stay around to write a man-on-the-street reaction story for the next day's Leader. I don't recall how many papers we printed for the extra, but it sold out rapidly."
Management had been pushing to put out the extra with only the news that the president had been shot, but Fain and Hanna kept asking for another couple of minutes.
"Finally the order came that the paper would go to press within 15 minutes. Period," Fain said. "A flash arrived at the last possible moment, saying it had been officially announced that the president was dead. When The Leader staff left the building at 3 p.m. it was the first time that I had ever seen people waiting lined up outside on Short Street to buy the paper.
"That was the first time that I had worked on putting out an extra," he continued. "The second time came a few years later when Bill Hanna and I were called out of bed early one morning and came in to put out an extra on the assassination of Robert Kennedy."
I was the city hall reporter, and there was nothing for me to do in the newsroom. After awhile I left and went home to be with my family. That night I went to a church service - prayers for the president and his family; prayers for the nation. To this day I can't sing these words, "Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away" without getting a lump in my throat.
Thirty-five years later, surfing the TV channels one night I came upon a program about the assassination of President Kennedy. Malcolm Kilduff, an assistant to Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, stood behind a table and announced to the people and the world that the president was dead. I had seen Mac do this many times, in a level voice with no facial expression, very professionally. But this time I caught something. When the last word was said he gave a gasping sigh.
In the 1980s Mac and Rosemary Kilduff became our friends. They had retired from government service and lived in Beattyville, Ky., Rosemary's hometown. I was leading Sunday services at St. Thomas Church. Often after church the Kilduffs, my wife and I had lunch at the Purple Cow Restaurant on Main Street. We talked about many things, including their experiences in government service, but little was said about the assassination. I listened to what Mac offered, but felt I shouldn't inquire too deeply.
The effect of the killing of President Kennedy has been described in many ways, but I don't know that anyone has called it a spiritual crime. I've been thinking about it. America is a spiritual nation; not that we're all "religious" and go to church, but that beyond laws there is a spirit that unites us. It came out of the ideals of the founders and has grown into something like a living presence. We sustain it by assent and we live in it.
The spirit was terribly wounded in Dallas and I, like millions of others felt it: shock and pain, and it drove us to our knees. Or to a great gasping sigh. But the spirit lives.