By the time the news spread, everything stopped.\nProfessors canceled classes. IU and Purdue University postponed the weekend's Old Oaken Bucket match. For the rest of the day, radios and televisions buzzed all over the quiet campus as students with pale faces and trembling nerves gathered and waited to hear any developments in the tragedy.\nJames Madison, a history professor at IU, remembers walking out of a music class during his sophomore year at Gettysburg College, when a student delivered the news in the simplest manner possible.\n"Someone shouted, 'The president's been shot!'" Madison said.\nMadison returned to his room and looked out the window where he could see an American flag waving in the middle of campus. Someone stood at the base of the flagpole and lowered the flag to half staff.\n"It was just such a shock and it was utterly beyond belief," Madison said. "Like many Americans at the time, I was so enamored with President Kennedy; all that he stood for and all the hope we had for him."
Dallas, Texas 1963 -- Kennedy\nOn Nov. 22, thousands flooded to Dealey Plaza in Dallas to sneak a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline. They paraded down the street in a custom-built limousine with a detachable, bulletproof top. The president requested that the roof be removed at the suggestion of local politicians.\nWhen the motorcade strolled down Elm Street, it came within sight of a seven-story book depository building where a 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle peered through an open window on the sixth floor.\nSix seconds later, three gunshots startled the boisterous crowd. One bullet found the president's neck; another struck his head.\nThirty minutes later, doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital declared the president dead. \nTwo hours later, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president.
The IU memorial\nThe Tuesday following the president's death, students and faculty members crowded the IU Auditorium for a memorial. With every seat taken and standing room occupied, people stood outside and paid their respects.\nThe memorial blended military traditions with religious observations. The student orchestra performed movements from Beethoven symphonies and funeral music from Wagner, and the drill team from the Bloomington American Legion presented the national and University colors.\nIU President Elvis J. Stahr led the memorial with a personal address about his memories of Kennedy, with whom Stahr was a friend and associate. Before his appointment as the University president, Stahr served as Kennedy's Secretary of the Army.\n"He was a warm and friendly human being who loved life and lived richly," Stahr said. "He was the greatest friend of education to sit in the White House since Thomas Jefferson."\nStahr said Kennedy was man of great faith who had a strong conviction that all men were created equal.\n"I would suggest that we shall best honor the memory of the man from this day forth if we strive, as he did … to eliminate bigotry, hatred, prejudice and intolerance from our minds and hearts," he said. "If we do these things with our whole hearts, I am very sure that John F. Kennedy would not feel he had died in vain."\nDallas, Texas 1963 -- Oswald\nOn Nov. 22, Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, arrived at his neighbor's house for a ride to work at the book depository. Oswald carried a package into work that he said contained curtain rods.\nAt 12:15 p.m., one of Oswald's co-workers said she saw him eating alone in the lunchroom on the sixth floor of the depository building. Fifteen minutes later, Kennedy was assassinated.\nAccording to reports, a police officer rushed to the depository after he saw the gunman retreat from the sixth story window. The officer encountered Oswald inside, but Oswald's calm and collected reserve deceived the officer, and he went on to investigate the sixth floor.\nLater in the afternoon, police officer J.D. Tippit was shot to death. Witnesses identified Oswald as the killer.\nPolice arrested Oswald that night at the Texas Theater. He was charged with the death of Tippit before Kennedy's. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald as police transferred him to another jail.
40 years later\nEnglish professor David Nordloh still remembers sitting in class when the president died. He remembers the hastily prepared memorial service the next morning. He remembers being sent home early for Thanksgiving break because the administrators did not know how else to console students. He hasn't forgotten the controversy that surfaced shortly after the assassination.\n"Immediately there were a whole lot of rumors about the conspiracy and many had the idea that a larger plot was involved," Nordloh said.\nA sense of uncertainty surrounding the assassination continues today, as Kennedy's death is one of the most widely studied events among conspiracy theorists. Despite the Warren Commission -- the report which investigated the assassination and concluded Oswald acted alone -- authors and historians continue to explore the possibility of another gunman. \nBut Madison does not buy into the conspiracies. He said he believes the strong fascination people have for the Kennedy conspiracies diminishes the president's legend. \nWhether people remember Nov. 22 for the conspiracies or for the man who died, the visions of Kennedy's limo speeding down Elm Street after the paralyzing sounds of three gunshots still exist -- frozen in the minds of witnesses -- 40 years later. \n"His death wasn't just that day or that weekend," Madison said. "In a way, it was forever"
