While reading Killing Kennedy

-Dwarika Pd.Shrestha

 With two powerful paragraphs that open 'A Note to Readers' of the book “Killing Kennedy”Bill O' Reilly writes on May 2012, Long Island, New York, “The students in Brother Carmine Diodati's freshman religion class were startled. Over the loud speaker, a radio report crackled into the Chaminade High School classroom. President John F. Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas, Texas, and taken to the hospital. A short time later we would all learn he was dead. No one knows what to say.”

“Most Americans born before 1953 remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that JFK had been assassinated. The days following that terrible Friday were filled with sadness and confusion. Why did it happen? Who really killed the President ? What kind of country did we live in anyway ?” Date- November 22, 1963. Mineola, New York. From Bill O' Reilly and Martin Dugard.

Those remarks reminded me that Friday night I was on night duty as a copy editor. It was about 2 A.M., our team who (me and a few other friends including member editors and pressmen) worked for the morning edition of The Rising Nepal daily were almost done. Expecting to go to bed a little earlier than normal. We had some teleprinters in another room and a radio tuned to news broadcast from some radio station. The radio news, must be BBC or Voice of America crackled 'President JF Kennedy was gunned down ...'. Now the total schedule was changed. Telephone in another room rang frequently. The crackling of teleprinters were fast and continued not even with punctuation marks. They were printing the news reports, comments, criticisms from many political as well as the national leaders of different countries – no matter which one was Democratic or Communist were pouring in on the roll papers. The staff in the night duty were abruptly told that they had to restart works for the leading page of the Rising Nepal next day.

The sentiment among the staff in the room at that moment was one of astonishment and loss. Knowingly or unknowingly, late U.S. President J F Kennedy had won the hearts of many in the world. There were many fans of his in Nepal too, no matter whether they were political activists, leaders or the govt staff or the college teachers. I had also very much been interested in listening to him. Being involved in a daily newspaper, many times were used to listen his deliveries in senate and in the congress. “Think not what a country can do for you. Think what you can do for the country.” A well known quote established in these days was heard first time in his speech.

We were abruptly told for more work because tomorrow's edition must come with new leading page with a picture of late JF Kennedy with a bold black border all around and pay homage to an immortal soul of late Kennedy. All the news reports and works completed so far on the latest news covered before the latest report of assassination in compose and prints had to be filed away in different box-file of news. They could be published another day. Our night duty for next morning's publication restarted. It was already an early morning of 23^rd November. Generally, the dead line of night duty was up to 5 A.M. at the most. The morning edition 'The Rising Nepal' must be reached to the break fast table of each and every one in the city.

We were working in a room rented out in a house of a neighbor at Dharam Path in New Road, Kathmandu- a place named after the name of late Dharma Bhakta Mathema, a political hero during the Rana Regime who was hanged to death by the then Rana government before 1951 A.D. He was among the five political heroes who had sacrificed their lives and status for the peoples' right. The working place was nearby to the printing press owned by the then His Majesty's Government of Nepal.

New leading page with new gate-up of the paper with latest coverage on the assassination of late President Kennedy was the only must to be collected, selected, edited and re-written to be printed on next day's news paper. Therefore the collection of reports posted by the teleprinters of AP, AFP, Xinhua, PTI and RSS and follow-up reaction from different chiefs of political parties and others were collected, edited. New gate-up of the new leading page were done on their best.

Late JFK was a democrat and an asset to the country like the USA. He was surviving with neck-to-neck political fight with many of the mighty nations like USSR (Nikita Khruschev), Republic of China (Liu Shaoqi), Cuba (Fiedel Castro) and many other countries. His tenure also saw the first human flight to the Moon. The first US satellite was also launched during his term. Assassination of JF Kennedy, as the authors of the book remarked was an 'End of Camelot'.