First Draft to Published

  By William Bertram MacFarland I’ve been asked to describe how I felt and what was going on in the White House the day of President Kennedy’s assassination. It’s extremely painful for me to re-live that day. The world lost a great leader, our nation lost its last chance of avoiding involvement in a grotesque war in Vietnam and all Americans lost a true visionary who inspired the country and united everyone around him. I lost my best friend. His death was the end of Camelot. November 22, 1963 I was sitting in my office in the West Wing working on the troop withdrawal plan for South Vietnam when around 1:45 p.m. I heard somebody running down the corridor yelling, “Everybody drop what you’re doing and get to the Staff Dining Room!” There was an unmistakable note of panic in the voice and although I didn’t want to interrupt my train of thought on the mathematics of the model construction, I was concerned and figured, “What the hell. My train of thought has already...