E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of only four sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls. Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

YES, IT REALLY WAS 50 YEARS AGO THAT MADNESS CLAIMED THE LIFE OF
JOHN F. KENNEDY - AND TWO DAYS LATER WE WENT TO A GAME IN DALLAS

By Dave Klein
And now, with your permission, a diversion from the Giants and their game with the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, shot by a gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald with a mail-order Mannlicher rifle that cost him $12. It happened from a window in the Texas Book Depository on Dealey Plaza in Dallas and it stunned the nation and the world.

There are still rampant conspiracy theories as to who else might have been involved, but to this date, a full 50 years later, no one has provided anything but theory and speculation.

Two days later, by order of then Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the NFL carried out its full schedule of games, and on Nov. 24, 1963, the Giants found themselves in St. Louis, where they lost.

The next weekend they went to Dallas.

Rozelle always thought - and said - that "the worst mistake of my career was to play that weekend's games." But he canvassed the NFL's owners before making that announcement, and he noted that JFK has been a "rabid football fan" and the games, all of them, were going to be played in his honor.

There were many Americans against the decision, but it should be noted that the stands were full anyway.

And now the Giants and Cowboys are going to play again, almost exactly 50 years later, and the memory banks are overflowing.

We made the trip to Dallas, sportswriters and columnists, and the main focus was not the game (which the Giants won) but the overwhelming sadness that permeated the traveling party. Sad to say, not all Texans shared that sentiment, and there is a story that I cannot seem to put away that a class of grade school students, when told of what had happened, jumped up and cheered - because their teacher did.

You can't make that up - and you wouldn't want to, either.

So we did the obligatory things that Saturday. We walked to the Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll, where less than two weeks earlier perhaps the most offensive and loved President of the United States had had his life snatched away. We walked past the Dallas Police Stadium where Oswald, while being escorted down a hallway, was shot to death by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby two days later.

Ironically, Sunday's game will be the 50th anniversary of Ruby's killing of Oswald. Ruby later told his family that "I thought I was going to be a hero for killing that man," but instead he was tried and convicted and sentenced to live in prison. He died soon after from a brain embolism.

How did Ruby get into the building? He was a friend of most of the policemen, and he asked for permission to watch the circus. No one involved with the Dallas police has ever addressed that simple question.

So they played the game that Sunday, and none of the Giants' hearts were in it. "I don't think this is right," said fullback Alex Webster. "I mean, they killed our President right here in this town and now we are going to play a game and people will cheer."

Rozelle's contention was that the public needed a respite from the two endless days of mourning of the funeral, of the burial, of seeing his beautiful young wife, Jackie, still wearing the blood-stained pink suit as she exited from the plane bringing him back to Edwards Air Force base.

Guard Jack Stroud had a poignant comment, too. "Just how the hell do I get angry enough to play on the line when the guy across from me didn't have anything to do with this? I'm sad. I'm upset. I just want to sit alone and think."

The shooting marked the end of the innocence of this country. The president who replaced JFK, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was no match. That he was from Texas was just another slap in the face, and his wife, who they called Lady Bird, approached Jackie Kennedy that afternoon, before her husband was sworn in on the airplane, and tried to express her sorrow. "Imagine," she chirped, "and right here in my state, too."

Nausea.

Will you ever forget where you were on that fateful Friday afternoon? Can you ever obliterate the scene of three-year-old John-John Kennedy saluting the caisson as it wheeled slowly, sadly, past the White House? The weekend seemed surreal, and in the end it was marked by a series of football games.

Nausea.

Rozelle died in 1996, but resigned as commissioner in 1989. He was replaced by Paul Tagliabue, and in 2001m when the World Trade Towers came down in an act of blear and obvious mass murder, he did not allow the games of that weekend to be played.

"Pete said it was his mistake," Tagliabue said, "and I am not going to repeat it. I am going to learn from his words."

The memory of that weekend so many years later was of sitting in the Kansas City press lounge on Sept. 23, two weeks after the horrid event of 09/11, and I walked up to former Giant cornerback Dick Lynch, who was then one of the team's radio announcers.

His son, Richard, had been lost in one of the towers when it went down, and I expressed sympathies and condolences to a man I had already known for 40 years. He smiled and shook his head.

"No reason," he said. "He's fine. He's just wandering around, can't remember anything, but one day he'll come home."

No grip with reality there; it wasn't until seven years and 13 days later, when Dick died of leukemia, that he was reunited with Richard once again.

Sadness is a way of life, it is said. I understand that. But that's not right. Sports shouldn't be brought into it.

Friday we'll write about football and the Giants and the Cowboys, okay?

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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