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JFK Remembered; Being Thankful For Our Local Libraries and NYPD This Thanksgiving · OneLegUpAlex Media

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  Here's your host, Alex Garren, and welcome inside to the Alex Garrett Podcast
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  Network for today, November twenty second, twenty twenty three. Thanks for joining
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  us as always, and if you want to hear my podcast of Thankfulness and
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  Gratitude, click the link below, it'll be in the description. And if
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  you want to hear the entire Terminillos take just launch today, you can find
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  that in the description below. But what lou Terminillo told me about the nineteen
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  sixty three sports scene following the assassination of JFK is remarkable and maybe if you're
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  old enough to remember, you two can go a bit of memory lane,
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  though not so good memory of how the sports scene reacts to the assassination of
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  John F. Kennedy. We'll get to that right now on the Alec Scarrett
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  Podcast Networks one leg up feature sixty years ago the assassination of JFK. And
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  everybody's so wrapped up with the conspiracy side of it, Louis, I don't
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  even know if anybody talks about the sports side of it, because remember,
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  during all these tragedies, what do we hear about, well, Boston Strong
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  after the Boston Marathon, the Red Sox and Bruins made that city go even
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  Houston despite whatever they did in twenty seventeen after the hurricane, really uplifted the
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  city with that World Series run. There was a lot of examples, but
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  no one ever talks about whether sports played a role or not in the Kennedy
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  in the post Kennedy assassination, Mate, and I know you might have some
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  thoughts on that, well, Alex. I was ten years old the day
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  that President Kennedy was sad. I'll never forget it. It was a Friday
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  afternoon. I was in fifth grade. It's about two thirty, twenty two
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  thirty, and I was going to Saint Peter and Paul's Catholic School in Hoboken,
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  New Jersey, and our pastor father has came in and spoke to our
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  teacher, and then he spoke to us and told us what happened, and
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  we were all stunned, and I think we said a prayer with the pastor,
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  and then it was almost the end of the school day. We got
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  out of about two fifty and I got home and my mother was upset.
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  I could. I remember my mother on the phone talking to my aunt and
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  she was crying, and I remember that that weekend seemed surreal. It seemed
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  like time stopped. The only thing on television was the assassination, no matter
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  what channel you put on. And remember, back in those days, we'll
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  just talk about people who aren't living in don't live in New York. Back
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  in those days, you had the CBS, ABC and NBC affiliate. You
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  had Channel you had Channel five, which was an independent station, Channel nine,
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  which was an independent station, Channel eleven, which was an independent station.
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  That was it. And he had public Television on thirteen. And you
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  gotta remember that was nineteen sixty three. TV was only fourteen to fifteen years
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  old, you know. Now, you think that TV has been around for
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  you know, two hundred years. TV at TV went off the air at
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  eleven thirty at night after eleven o'clock news, and came back on at six
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  o'clock. You know, I remember that. A lot of people don't remember
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  that, but it seemed like we were stopped in time for those those three
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  days. The NFL and AFL were not together at the time. The NFL
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  obviously, it was a Friday afternoon and many NFL teams were going to travel
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  to where they were going to play that weekend. Rosette. Pete rosel the
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  commission of the NFL at the time and one of the great commissioners in the
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  history of any sport, didn't know what to do. He called Pierre Salinger,
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  who was the White House Press Secretary, and we knew he knew from
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  his days at the University of San Francisco when he was the SID and in
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  the fiftieth the University of San Francisco was had a powerhouse football team. So
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  Pierre Salmser said, I think President Kennedy, being a big football fan,
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  that said play the games. He would want you to play the games.
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  But so Roselle said, We're going to play the games. The mayor of
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  Philadelphia said, we don't want to play the game in here in Philly.
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  Washington was playing Philadelphia that weekend at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, and Roselle said,
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  I made my decision. You're going to play the game. The Steelers,
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  Rooney, their owner, called up and said the Steelers don't want to
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  play on Sunday they were playing in Pittsburgh against the Bears. I think and
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  he said, made my decision. So all the games went on and the
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  Giants that were playing the Cardinals at the Yankee Stadium that day. The Cowboys,
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  Now this is not the Cowboys that we know now as America's team.
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  This was the Cowboys and the Cowboys in nineteen sixty three, it was their
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  fourth year in the league. They play at the Cotton Bowl and now you
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  see Jerry's world and you see ninety thousand people there in that stadium, Alex
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  they were averaging about twenty five thousand people a game and didn't catch on really
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  in the market until like sixty six sixty seven when they became really good.
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  So the Cowboys were playing in Cleveland that week against the Browns, and when
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  they got to Cleveland and they got to the hotel, nobody would give them
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  helps with their beg because they're from Dallas and that's where Kennedy got shot.
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  I mean, there was a mark on Dallas for a long time because of
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  that was the site of the Kennedy assassination and really stayed that way, believe
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  it or not, until the Cowboys became a Super Bowl contender in sixty six
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  and sixty seven. That helped, believe it or not, those Dallas teams
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  helped erase that stigma a little bit. So it was so bad Alex that
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  when they got to Cleveland, like I said, besides none of the porters
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  or the concierage people helping them with their begs. That it was so bad
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  that weekend when they did not introduce them as Dallas Cowboys. When on Sunday
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  any kind of had to the PA announced had to refer to them, just
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  call them cowboys. The Cowboys take the field first intend, not for Dallas
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  first intent over the Cowboys. That's how raw the situation was. You know,
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  that's crazy. You know, I don't think they would have played today
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  if I agree, And the commissioner Roselle said, thirty years later, that
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  was the biggest mistake of my NFL NFL career as commissioner because the American Football
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  League postponed the games. There are four games that weekend. College football postponed
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  seventy five percent of the games that weekend and the next weekend on November thirtieth,
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  Army was going to play Navy and JFK was going to attend, but
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  that game, that game was postponed and Jacqueline Kennedy said, we want the
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  game to be played, and it was played the following week December seventh,
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  and It was a very one of the most famous Army Navy games ever.
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  Army was trying to beat Navy. The winner was going to the Cotton Bowl
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  to play number one Texas. Navy was number two. Roger Staubach, who
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  would win the Heisman Trophy in nineteen sixty three and ended up being a great
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  Dallas cowboy and a member of the Football Hall of Fame, was a quarterback.
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  They beat Army twenty one to fifteen, and they played Texas on New
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  Year's Day in the Cotton Bowl for the National Championship. Texas beat them twenty
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  eight to seven. But a great game when you have time look it up.
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  Great detail in that game. But there was another famous incident in that
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  game, or let's say the not incident, the introduction of something that we
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  take for granted now, the great Lindsay Nelson, who was a great Mets
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  announcer, and he's a Hall of Famer in baseball, and he was a
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  Hall of Fame, he's a Hall of Famer as a football announcer. He
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  was he's considered one of the top five to ten football and college football announces
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  of all time. He did the play by play. So after Army scores
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  a touchdown, they show something that people watching at home didn't understand what was
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  going on so much so they started calling up the CBS switchboard. The first
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  ever instant replay. So that game, that game that was postponed is historic,
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  not only because it was a great Army Navy game, but it was
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  the it was the dawning of instant replay. And Lindsey Nelson kept saying,
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  you're not seeing Army score again, it's an instant replay, but people still
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  couldn't get their their mind around what they're seeing. So that's, you know,
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  so that I couldn't imagine the the I couldn't imagine the the manager of
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  that because December seventh, of course was unfortunately Pearl Harbor Anniversary too, so
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  there was a lot of emotion I'm sure in that game. Absolutely every flag
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  at Memorial Stain, which ended up being renamed JFK Stadium and is now demolished
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  because it was old. Every flag was obviously at half staff, and there
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  was a somber day, no doubt about it. And you know, one
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  little other kid bit during those NFL games, it was one o'clock NFL games
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  on Sunday that Roselle decided to go ahead and play. And I remember this
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  because I was watching live with my grandmother and my my younger brother. We
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  saw live on our little thirteen inch black and white television. We saw Jack
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  Ruby shoot and kill Lee Harvey Oswald. I remember it. I remember Alex
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  where I was. We were watching it in a more kitchen, and it's
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  as clear as day. Just an unbelievable weekend all around. Well, that
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  is a very interesting take about how sports. I guess you would say a
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  tendency heal, but people were actually giving a backlash. Now again, it's
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  one of those things where sports is needed during time of tragedies. Well,
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  looking back, those NFL games didn't do anything to uplift the country. The
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  country. If you want to go to a sporting event that uplifted the country,
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  it was that game on December seventh. That Army Navy game was almost
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  like the first game of New York after nine to eleven, But it was
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  just different in those days. The sadness was overwhelming for a while. I
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  can only imagine. And also it speaks how united we are we were as
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  a country back then over something as horrible as that, And I think we
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  still would be. But there's so much division. Correct this thing saving week
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  that has just crazy even so as we get you know, heading into Thanksgiving,
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  obviously we're thankful for our health and so many things, our family and
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  the first sports, I mean for sports for getting us through a lot.
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  I mean, look, you know, and sports is a major part of
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  Americana. And we're going to have you know, nice dinner on Thursday with
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  our families. But we have a lot of challenges. We have a lot
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  of challenges as we're go into the end of this year into twenty twenty four,
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  and I just hope that everybody can just really take a step back and
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  like you said, become more united like we used to be and there was
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  always Disagreement's always a division, but not like we've seen that again. Thank
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  you, Lou for talking about this and from a historical aspect, from your
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  historical aspect as well, where you were the day JFK did get assassinated sixty
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  years ago. Now, one last thing, it's a reminder of why we
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  should be thankful for everything. What I'm about to tell you, because Army
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  know this, but Mayor Adams last week came out with a bunch of midyear
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  twenty twenty four budget cuts that actually reduced the police and you know a lot
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  of people are against that obviously with the rise and crime. So we're thankful
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  to our cops and to the NYPD for protecting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and
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  the Jewish communities and all races and backgrounds as we head into Thanksgiving. But
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  one of the cuts that I find really tragic is the reason why we should
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  be thankful for our libraries. The New York Public Library this week had this
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  announcement on their feed. I couldn't believe my eyes. The New York Public
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  Library Big red and white letter service impacts. The New York Public Library regrets
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  to announce that, due to midyear budget cuts, we must suspend Sunday service
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  at all New York Public Library locations that currently offer it. This Sunday will
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  be the last day of Sunday service at Bronx Library Center, Grand Concourse,
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  Jefferson Market Parkchester Stavros, New York Show's Foundation Library, Steven Schwartzman Building that's
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  the big one on Fifth Avenue, Totill Westerly and Washington Heights. These service
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  changes are the results of the new York Cities recently announced annual November financial plan,
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  which include public cuts to libraries, to public libraries as well as cuts
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  to city agencies. So this is really not good in a time where Andrew
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  Bernston and I talked about education and how violent it is to keep that child's
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  brain going stimulated. Of course on weekends, that's when they're with their parents
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  and loved ones. And so be thankful for the library this Thanksgiving. That's
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  my other message this year, because the library plays I know we're all digital,
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  but the library still plays a role of function in society, and any
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  cuts to that should be a high alert that the city's doing something wrong and
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  needs to change course. If we're going to have it truly cultivating growth of
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  our younger generations, the libraries need to be open, and so pay your
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  late fees if they're not being paid, and so much more. Just show
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  gratitude to your library, your local library this year, and be thankful that
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  they are around, because clearly the city doesn't seem to value it if they're
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  closing Sunday service down in these certain branches. Just thought you should know that
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  should be a PSA to you and your face family. If you do have
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  kids in school and you go to the local library. Yeah, that's not
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  an option now on Sundays, and I think that should be changed and reversed.
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  And be thankful for the services the city can provide, because clearly we
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  are in some turmoil and we can only pray that we be thankful for what
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  we have and what the city can provide to all eight point eight million residents.
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  Happy Thanksgiving and hopefully it's a thoughtful one, a reflective one, and
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  a joyful one. And we'll talk to you soon on the Alex Garrett Podcast Network