Nearly all Americans who were alive when President Kennedy was murdered remember how and where they got the news. In announcing her revitalized blog, Carol Sloane asked her contacts to recall what they were doing on November 22, 1963. This is what I sent her:
My camera crew and I were in the ballroom of the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, interviewing Denise Tourover, the national head of Hadassah. Mrs. Tourover was from Washington DC. She was a friend of the Kennedys. I had just asked her about the importance of Mr. Kennedy’s trip to Dallas when Richard Ross, the anchor at a competing station, burst into the room and announced that the President had been shot. It was soon confirmed that he was dead. KATU-TV had just been named the ABC affiliate in Portland, but the
contract allowing us to carry the network’s coverage had not gone into effect. For the first several hours, until ABC made arrangements to hook us into the network, our news department carried the load of reporting about the assassination, depending on wire services and whatever guest experts we could round up. I persuaded Mrs. Tourover to come to the studio and go live with us. She became an invaluable source and a connection to other Kennedy contacts across the country. I did not leave the studio, or the air, for nearly 24 of the most demanding and emotional hours of my life.
