I was just a boy, but I’ll never forget JFK’s death

On Sept 28, 1963, I saw, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, President John F Kennedy. At that moment, he became a hero of mine.

Up until then, I had the usual heroes, such as actors John Wayne, Dan Blocker (Hoss Cartwright, of the TV show Bonanza), Sean Connery’s James Bond, and my favourite at the time, Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and, of course, Elvis Presley, the usual assortment of a ten-year-old growing up in America.

Kennedy only spoke for 17 minutes and I didn’t know what he was talking about, but the crowd went crazy. My mother and my friends’ mothers were calling out, ‘Mr President, Mr President’. It was pandemonium.