Miami Came to a Standstill As News of John F. Kennedy's Assassination Spread

President John F. Kennedy was no stranger to South Florida. His family had a winter home in Palm Beach, and their activities there were well documented by the local and national media fascinated by the aura of Camelot. WTVJ had a Palm Beach bureau and Kennedy stories often appeared in the newscasts.

And in Miami, quickly growing from a sleepy Southern city into a diverse center of hemispheric intrigue and Latin American influence, was well in tune with Kennedy. He had been the centerpiece in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion and had brokered the resolution of the Cuban Missile crisis.

It was legendary Florida Congressman Dante Fascell who broke the news to attendees at a Miami lunch meeting.

"The president has been shot while in Texas and we do not know how serious it is,” he said.

The speaker, "Shorty" Powers, the famous voice of America's space program, was stunned, looking to the back of the room at the bank of cameras and reporters. "I would hope one of the newsmen or stations or something would keep us informed,” he said.

They did and the news was shocking.

At the Miami News evening newspaper, Editor Howard Kleinberg rushed into the pressroom and hollered "Stop the presses!" The presses stopped and so did the town.

Small crowds gathered at appliance store front windows watching the TVs that were on display. Drivers, listening to the early reports on the radio, pulled over to listen to the sketchy reports that were coming out of Dallas. WTVJ reporters quickly got into downtown. What they found was people in shock.

"I have nothing to say, I can't talk. I have chills all over," said one well-dressed young man. A woman and her husband, arm in arm, told a reporter, "We are just shocked and disturbed, that we do not believe that it is true. We can't believe it."

Nov. 22, 1963 was a bright sun-filled day, with a high temperature of 80 degrees. The kind of winter weather that made Florida famous and yet it was a gray day where things seemed to move in slow motion. Newspaper reports of the day describe tourists wandering aimlessly in hotel lobbies, women on park benches staring at newsstand headlines, men crying. Traffic thinning out, sidewalks empty. Many businesses closed, people went home.

Miami historian Paul George, then a University of Miami student working at the City Library, helped lower the U.S. flag to half-staff. After work he did what a good portion of Miami residents did over the next four days. He went to church.

"I went to church at St Peter's and Paul's and it was full of people right away,” he recalled.

Miami radio and TV stations dropped regular programming. There was nonstop coverage as the city, the nation, the world focused on the events in Dallas. The Kennedy assassination was the coming of age of television news, especially when the world saw, on live TV, Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

It seemed it would never end. Friday the 22nd the president was shot and killed, Sunday the 24th Oswald dies, and the funeral for the slain president was held on Monday the 25th. It was a lot to swallow in four days.

Jaime Suchlicki was 25 years old, a Cuban exile working his way through the University of Miami.

"It was a shock to a young Cuban-American and student seeing what happened,” he said.

But Suchlicki, the university's premier expert on Cuba and Cuban-Americans, says, "On one hand he (Kennedy) failed the Cuban in the Bay of Pigs and he somewhat redeemed himself in the missile crisis." That statement is backed by journalist Howard Kleinberg. "They did not like Kennedy from the Bay of Pigs, but when he was killed by Castro, as they said, it was a terrible thing they had done to our president,” he says.

On Monday the 25th, the day of the funeral, the entire city was shut down at least part of the day. Lifeguard stands were empty on Miami Beach. Wometco Theaters suspended their movies, restaurants were closed. Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile was empty of foot and automobile traffic.

Miami was ripe with rumors about the death. Citizens had certainly more insight or thought they had a handle on why he was killed. After all, Cuban exiles or not, they'd been living with effects of the Castro revolution since the mid-1950s. What was the talk? Kleinberg remembers well, "it was all about Oswald, Castro, and Ruby and the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover. Everybody knew who killed Kennedy."

As the populace absorbed the impact of the death of the young president an impromptu memorial grew at the base of Miami's Freedom Torch Monument just in front of what is now Bayside. The crowds reflected Miami's rapidly changing ethnic face. Especially prominent in the WTVJ news film of the day were the Cubans. They might have had issues with the president but they were grateful to the nation and its slain leader who had taken them in.

Paul George remembers the scene well.

"It was a gathering place appropriately enough dedicated to his memory a month and a half after his assassination,” he said.

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