I won’t ever forget hearing the news – working in Pittsburgh as a marketing analyst, returning from lunch with colleagues when we it was announced.

November 22, 1963 was a Friday. The working day ended once the news broke, everyone in my department stunned, unable to focus on anything else.

It was too early to know what evidence later revealed. Lee Harvey Oswald was a convenient patsy, uninvolved in what happened, a state-sponsored assassination, CIA and secret service dirty hands likely responsible.

Killing him mattered. Things might have been different had he lived, at least for a time. November 22, 1963 remains a stain on America’s deplorable legacy.

JFK’s body was flown to Washington from Dallas. On Sunday, November 24, a horse-drawn caisson carried his flag-draped coffin to lie in state on Capitol Hill.

On November 25, officials from over 90 countries attended his state funeral. After a St. Matthew’s requiem mass, he was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

The events of that time will stay with me always. JFK was assassinated for transforming himself from a warrior to peacemaker.

Rejecting Pax Americana, wanting nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with Soviet Russia, all US forces out of Vietnam by December 1965, and other anti-establishment policies proved his undoing.

America’s deep state had other ideas – the challenge Trump faces if he follows through on wanting better relations with Moscow and President Vladimir Putin – perhaps favoring more diplomacy and less wars.

Plato once said “(s)trange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.”

The Warren Commission whitewashed what happened. The Big Lie persists to this day. Extensive research James Fetzer conducted concluded the following:

“The weapon Oswald is alleged to have used cannot have fired the bullets that killed JFK. The ‘magic bullet’ theory is provably untrue and was not even anatomically possible.”

“JFK was hit four times – in the throat from in front, in the back from behind, and in the head from in front and behind.”

“X-rays were altered. A brain was substituted, and photos and films were faked to conceal the true causes of his death.”

Fetzer cited “more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting JFK up for the hit.”

“Two agents assigned to the limousine were left behind at Love Field. The flat-bed truck for reporters that should have preceded the limo was cancelled.” “The motorcycle escort was cut down to four and was instructed not to ride ahead of the rear wheels. Open windows were not covered. The manhole covers were not welded, and the crowd was allowed to spill into the street.” “…Vehicles were in the wrong order, with (Kennedy’s) Lincoln first, when it should have been in the middle.” “This was such a blatant violation of protocol that any security expert would have detected it.” The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) destroyed the Presidential Protection Records to eliminate important evidence.

Kennedy’s route was changed days before he arrived. Included was a strictly prohibited 90 degree turn. After gunfire struck him, driver William Greer pulled to the left. He stopped the vehicle.

“At Parkland Hospital, (Secret Service) agents got a bucket of water and a sponge, and washed brains and blood from the crime scene.”

Kennedy’s “limousine was taken back to Ford. (It) was stripped to bare metal and rebuilt” – destroying important evidence.

Pseudo-documentaries air on TV, distorting what happened, concealing vital truths, sticking to the long ago discredited lone gunman explanation.

“As much thought was given to concealing the truth from the public as was given to executing the assassination itself,” Fetzer explained.

Had Kennedy lived, imagine the possibilities. He likely would have served two terms, perhaps RFK succeeding him in January 1969 had he lived. Maybe the Cold War would have ended and Southeast Asia war avoided.

We’ll never know what might have been, only the deplorable aftermath of JFK’s assassination, followed by RFK’s to keep another Kennedy from becoming president.