On day JFK was killed, past, present, future collided

Hugh Aynesworth officially had the day off that Friday, and the 32-year-old space and aviation reporter for the Dallas Morning News was miffed at his newsroom bosses. Just back from a reporting trip to Cuba, he found that every other reporter had some assignment related to the president's momentous visit to Dallas, but he had nothing. He felt left out.

He wandered into the newsroom anyway, had lunch in the Morning News cafeteria and then strolled three blocks over to Market and Main to watch the presidential procession. Under a blue sky, he stood with a couple of acquaintances across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, an unremarkable building he'd hardly ever noticed. Standing among the crowd about 10 feet from the curb, he saw the limousine glide by, saw the president and first lady. Then he heard the shots.

Ninety miles to the south, it was game day at Waco La Vega High School, just as it was in towns large and small across Texas. For the Pirates and their opponent, the University High Trojans from across the Brazos in South Waco, it was the final football game of the season. Neither team had been particularly successful, but a victory against its archrival almost made up for a season of futility.

Shortly after lunch the Pirates' quarterback, a 17-year-old senior, was sitting in study hall in jeans and his Columbia-blue game jersey, waiting for Coach James to call him to his office for a last-minute strategy session.

At about 1, the loudspeaker crackled on. A somber radio voice announced, "In Dallas today …"

Everybody in the room sat stunned. When they changed classes shortly afterward, only the sound of girls sobbing broke the hallway silence.

As Aynesworth surged toward the front door of the school book depository, he realized he had no pen and nothing to write on except a couple of unpaid bills in his shirt pocket. He noticed a child in his father's arms; the little boy clutched a fat, jumbo pencil in his hand. The young reporter found two quarters and bought the pencil off the kid, then plunged through the panicked crowd into the building. Interviewing as many people as he could before police moved in, he happened to hear the radio on a police motorcycle report that an officer had been shot in Oak Cliff, across the Trinity from downtown. He had a feeling that the cop shooting was connected to the assassination, although he couldn't explain why.

After school the quarterback and his teammates waited at home to find out whether high-school football games across Texas would go on that night. At about 5, the University Interscholastic League gave the go-ahead. (Sticking to a playoff schedule trumped commemorating the death of a president.) About an hour later, with both teams warming up on the La Vega field, a norther blew through, and a warm evening turned cold and blustery. It somehow seemed appropriate. Many in the stands, only half full to begin with, went home.

For the quarterback, the game was a disaster. When he tried to throw into the cutting wind, his passes floated like Wiffle balls. Four times, they ended up in the arms of a University High defensive back. Running was no better; the Trojans kept the Pirates offense bottled up all night. Shortly before the half, the Trojans quarterback, a friend of his, lofted a desperation pass into the end zone - and completed it. That was it: Trojans 8, Pirates 0.

That afternoon, Aynes­worth had hitched a ride to Oak Cliff with a radio reporter, eventually making his way to the lobby of the Texas Theater. The suspect, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, was sitting in the gloom. "Cry of Battle," starring Van Heflin, was showing on the screen.

From his vantage point in the lobby, Aynesworth watched as two men methodically moved from the front of the theater up the aisles. Oswald sat quietly. When the officers got to him and ordered him to his feet, he muttered, "Well, it's all over now." He made a gesture of surrender, then socked one officer in the face with his left fist. With his other hand, he pulled a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson from his belt. Aynesworth watched as several officers managed to subdue him.

Helmet in hand, the quarterback trudged into the messy, crowded locker room. Stepping over crinkled, stripped-off tape and sweaty jerseys, he hugged teammates, shook hands with townspeople, listened to parting words from Coach James. Standing at his locker and stripping off gear, he suddenly began crying.

The tears surprised him; he never cried. His dad walked up, draped an arm around his shoulders. "It's OK," he said quietly. "It's not your fault." Still, he couldn't stop the tears.

It took him a long time to understand that they were tears of loss - of a game, perhaps, but also the loss of a dream he had nurtured since childhood and, on that particular weekend, a loss of innocence. It was a loss he and the nation shared.

On Sunday, Aynesworth was home with his wife when he turned on the TV and learned that Oswald was still at the police lockup awaiting transfer to custody of the Dallas County sheriff. They threw on some clothes and raced to City Hall.

By then a huge out-of-town and international press contingent had converged on Dallas, and the basement echoed with voices and jostling as reporters tried to glimpse Oswald being escorted to a waiting police cruiser.

"Then, in the midst of it all, came that pop sound again," Aynesworth recalls. "It was 11:21 a.m. Detective Thomas McMillon later testified that Ruby snarled, 'You rat son of a bitch!' at Oswald as he shot him. But all I heard was that pop! Just once this time, muffled and faint. Jack Ruby's Colt Cobra .38 sounded like a toy."

Years later, the old quarterback was working with the Dallas County Historical Commission as it tried to determine what to do with the schoolbook depository - remodel it, ignore it, perhaps raze it. He stood in the open window of the sixth floor, where Oswald stood. It was eerie. Staring down at the street and realizing how close it was, he thought to himself, "I could have shot him."

Aynesworth, now 82 and still in Dallas, could never have imagined on that momentous weekend that he would be writing about the Kennedy assassination for the next 50 years. For the Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald, UPI, Newsweek, the Washington Times, Life magazine, ABC's "20/20" and in several of his seven books (most recently, "November 22, 1963: Witness to History"), he's explored the characters, complexities and conspiracy theories, cockeyed and otherwise. In Jim Lehrer's words, "it was Hugh's story from day one."

A few days ago the old quarterback and the old journalist, both of us now grizzled and age-worn, were sitting in Aynesworth's home office. After all these years Aynesworth still believes Oswald was a troubled loser who acted alone. He also told me he's looking forward to Nov. 23. "There's a chance that after November 22 I'll never mention JFK again, ever," he said.

Glancing around the office, with its clutter of notes, books, articles and assassination memorabilia, I'm guessing the chance is pretty slim, for him and for the rest of us.